Yes, Wikipedia calls this some type of dumpling, and not bread. I’d agree for the traditional German version, where it’s more pan fried and separated into balls. But I grew up with this oven baked version, which sits somewhere between sweet bread and cake. It’s basically a yeast leavened white bread dough, that soaks in a milk and sugar mixture while baking.

Edit:

Recipe:

500 g White flour

1 packet of dry yeast or 20 g of fresh yeast.

(For the sourdough version, use about 50g less flour and replace yeast with sourdough starter)

50 g Sugar

250 ml Milk

Mix milk, sugar and (dry) yeast

80 g Butter

Melt, and let it cool down to lukewarm, so it won’t kill the yeast

1 tsp Salt

1 Egg

Mix everything and knead until it’s a homogenous dough. It’s gonna be quite sticky.

Let it rise for 2 hours (or half a day for sourdough), until it’s approximately doubled in size.

150 ml Milk

150 g Sugar

100 g Butter

1 packet of Vanilla Sugar

Mix these in a small pan on low heat, until the butter is molten, and the sugar is mostly dissolved.

In a Pyrex (or any other oven safe vessel with tall walls) put in about half of the milk-sugar sauce.

Make 6 to 8 appx. fist sized balls out of the dough, and place them equally spaced into the dish with the sauce.

Cover and let rise for another 30 min (longer for sourdough)

Preheat the oven to 200°C. If the oven dish has a lid, put it on. Otherwise make one out of Aluminium foil.

Bake with the lid on for 25 minutes. The balls should have grown a lot, and the tops should have gone a very light touch of brown. If not, bake for another 5 minutes.

Take out of the oven, remove the lid, and use a knife to cut the balls apart where they have grown together.

Pour the rest of the sauce over the dough (make sure enough of it goes into the gaps too)

Bake without a lid for another 10 to 15 minutes, until nice and golden brown.

        • TheChriggu@feddit.deOPEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          A thing sold here in germany for all our vanilla needs when baking. It’s just sugar, that’s been mixed with vanilla and then kept in a closed container for a while, to infuse the aroma into the sugar.

          I don’t know what the exact equivalency between vanilla sugar and vanilla extract when it comes ro the intensity, but I’d assume that one packet of vanilla sugar is somewhere around one or two teaspoons of extract, since that is what American recipes always put into stuff that needs a touch of vanilla, without being overbearing.

      • key@lemmy.keychat.orgEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Gave the non-sourdough version a shot. Came out pretty good. Guessed a bit on some conversions and it took longer to rise than I was hoping so I ended up leaving it overnight. If I do it again I think I’ll try cutting the amount of flour like you suggested for the sourdough and add some cinnamon to the sauce (because cinnamon goes with everything). I also need to find a dish with higher walls.

    • TheChriggu@feddit.deOPEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Kind of, but it’s a bit more complicated xD

      I’m from Switzerland, and I’ve checked multiple recipe sources. Swiss sources (Fülscher, Tiptopf, Swissmilk.ch) consistently call this Dampfnudeln. I’ve just checked 2 or 3 recipes for Buchteln online. There seems to be a difference in that the Buchteln are baked dry, while my Dampfnudeln fill the dish with a milk sauce before baking, letting it soak into the dough while baking.

      The German Dampfnudeln use the same dough and sauce as the one I’ve used, but put the sauce into a pan, and fry the dough in there. The way I made it is somewhere in-between this two.

      I think I’ll keep calling it Dampfnudeln, cause that’s the name I grew up with, and that it’s known as back home. On a good day, I might even add the fun fact that it differs from the more popular version in Germany. And on a bad day I’ll argue that Germans are wrong and should just accept Swiss superiority in baking goods. /jk

      Edit: Just went to swissmilk, to check if they also have a recipe for Buchteln. They have this: https://www.swissmilk.ch/de/rezepte-kochideen/rezepte/LM200603_62/buchty-dampfnudeln/ Where they even point out, that it’s a type of Dampfnudel in the title. xD