I am searching for a recipe for laugenweck and I am not having any luck on the 'net. Does anyone in town sell these little baked hunks of heaven?.
Unclviny
Isn’t that a type of bread? If so, you might try the Three Brothers Bakery on Braeswood or West Gray.
Try posting to Chowhound’s Texas boards. The Chicago board is a treasure trove and it looks like the Texas board gets some good action as well.
Little description might be good…Laugenweck is actually a placename…
Sweet, savory? Nuts or meats baked into it? Spicy, salty, sour?
Cake, bread, cookie, candy?
Boy, good luck with that. Here is a translation of a German recipe (google for “Laugenbrötchen” if you want more recipes):
for the dough:
1 cube fresh baker’s yeast (42 g)
300 ml warm water
500 g fine wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt.
also needed:
2 liters of water
10 g “Natron” (This is caustic soda lye. In Germany you can get it at an apothecary. I have no idea where to get this in the States.)
1 tablespoon rock salt
1.: crumble the yeast and dissolve it in 100 ml lukewarm water. Put the flour in a bowl leaving an indentation in the middle of the heap of flour. Pour the dissolvced yeast in the indentation, spread some flour over this and then cover the bowl and let it stand in a warm place for 10 minutes to let the yeast rise.
2.: Add the rest of the water and the salt and knead the dough
3.: Form the dough into a roll, and cut into twelve pieces of the same size. Roll the pieces until they are roughly egg-shaped and then let them rise for 10 minutes.
4. Dissolve the lye in the 2 liters of water and bring this solution to a boil. Dip the Brötchen in this boiling solution for 1 minute. Sprinkle rock salt on the Brötchen and bake in an oven pre-heated to 225 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes.
This looks like quite a bit of work, especially making the lye solution, which is where the “Laugenbrötchen” get their name from. Lauge is German for lye. I don’t know anyone in Germany that makes their own Laugenbrötchen or Brezl. We just pick them up at the “Bäcker” every morning.
If this recipe works, please tell me, because then I will have to try it myself. The heathens here in the Netherlands have never heard of the manna that is a fresh Laugenweck or Laugenbrezl.
In Texas, or somewhere else? That would be really funny and wouldn’t surprise me.
Actually a Laugenweck or a Laugenbrötchen is a bun covered with a caustic lye solution and rock salt before baking. I wonder what crazy baker first discovered that this would actually taste good? Good? Nah, it tastes amazingly great, and I miss it like crazy!
Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys…