It begins, as it must, with Sofht. My mother’s kitchen filled with the sweet, yeasty scent of this German (perhaps more specifically, Bavarian) holiday bread at Christmas every year. “Sofht” is what she called it, and how she spelled it; but spelling was never her strong suit and converting German words to English spelling even less so. You won’t find any confirmation of this bread’s existence under that name on the internet. Stollen, this is definitely not. The closest look-alike I have found is a braided Swiss egg bread called Emmentaler Zopf, or Hefezopf, but the ingredients vary from my mother’s Sofht–more eggs, less sugar, less butter, no raisins or lemon zest.
Forty years ago, or more, I asked your grandmother for her Sofht recipe. I wanted to preserve the memory of the Christmases she worked so hard to make magical for her family by starting my own Sofht tradition. I received the following list of ingredients, which I scribbled on a scrap of paper*:
1 stick of butter (soft and warm)
2 eggs
2 packages yeast
1/2 cup warm milk
2/3 mixing bowl flour
4 handfuls of sugar
lemon zest
raisins
*I recently found the scrap of paper and have updated the list of ingredients accordingly.
I didn’t remember a list of steps, or instructions, in addition to the ingredients, although they were there. Salt was not on the list of ingredients, though bread requires salt. At a minimum, the butter your grandmother used must have been salted.
Now, I am the kind of cook who generally follows recipes as written, especially when baking. My precision-habituated mind rebelled upon hearing “2/3 mixing bowl flour” and “4 handfuls of sugar.” What size mixing bowl?! And the quantity of sugar necessarily would vary according to the size of the cook’s hand. The only additional help your grandmother could provide in interpreting her recipe was to specify that the mixing bowl should be of “medium” size, whatever that means.
In order to be preserved for posterity, the Sofht recipe clearly needed to be converted into precisely measured ingredients and steps that could be followed by future generations. I identified what appeared to be a mixing bowl of middling size and filled it 2/3 full of All Purpose flour (which is the only flour I can remember your grandmother ever using). I then used a measuring cup to establish that “2/3 mixing bowl flour” is roughly equal to 3 cups of flour. I dipped my hand into the sugar bag and tossed 4 handfuls of sugar into another bowl, establishing that “4 handfuls of sugar”–as measured by my hand, and allowing for loss of sugar between the bag and the bowl–is about 1/3 cup of sugar.
Here, then, is your grandmother’s Sofht recipe, upgraded for modern, less confident, less experienced bakers than she was, and accounting for changes injected by my faulty memory of her recipe.
Ingredients
8 tbsp good quality, unsalted butter (1 stick)
1-2 eggs, room temperature and lightly beaten (I have been using 1 egg and more milk than that called for by the original recipe)
1/2-3/4 cup warm milk
1 1/2-3 tsp yeast (one packet of yeast is 1 1/2 tsp, which is what I have been using, rather than the two your grandmother’s recipe specified)
3 cups All Purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup raisins
Rum
zest of 1 lemon
Instructions for Making the Dough By Hand
Heat milk until warm but not hot. Melt butter and allow to cool.
Whisk warm milk together with melted butter, egg, sugar and yeast and let stand for 5-10 minutes.
Cover raisins with boiling hot water. If desired, add rum for flavor.
Combine flour and salt.
Using a spatula, combine wet and dry ingredients until they begin to form a dough.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes, adding additional flour if needed to keep the dough from sticking.
Drain and dry raisins well.
Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a rough rectangle. Sprinkle the raisins and zest of 1 lemon on top of the dough. Fold sides and ends over the raisins and lemon zest. Knead it a few more times, until raisins and lemon zest are well-distributed.
Wash your mixing bowl and oil it with cooking spray or vegetable oil. Place the dough in the mixing bowl and give it a couple of turns to oil the dough.
Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap (spray or oil the underside so that it does not stick to the dough) and set in a warm place to rise until at least doubled (1-2 hours).
Beat an egg in a small bowl and set aside.
Instructions for Making the Dough Using a Bread Machine
Follow bread machine instructions. Typically, you will start with wet ingredients in the bottom of the machine, and finish with dry ingredients on top. Put on “dough” setting, and press start. Add well-dried raisins and lemon zest mid-way through the kneading cycle. Let rise.
Beat an egg in a small bowl and set aside.
Forming the Dough
Punch down the risen dough and divide into three equal pieces. Roll them into three logs, 12-16 inches in length and tapered at the ends. Pinch the dough together at the top and braid the three strands, pinching the dough together at the bottom. Place the bread on a parchment or silicon covered baking sheet. Brush the top of the dough with the beaten egg. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and set the dough aside to rise again until at least doubled.
Baking
While the dough finishes its second rise, heat the oven to 365 degrees. When the dough has risen, brush it again with egg wash and put it in the oven. Bake until golden brown on top and the bread sounds hollow when tapped. If you are unsure whether the bread is fully cooked, check it with a cooking thermometer. It should register 190 degrees (Fahrenheit) or more.
