Friday: Grittibänz

Happy Saint Nicholas Day and happy independence day for the Finns and the ones in Finland! In Switzerland on the Saint Nicholas Day one traditionally eats Grittibänz. I know it's technically not a cookie/guetzli, but because it's a special day I though to post about Grittibänz instead of some cookies.

Well okay, I'm no master with the Grittibänz but they did taste good.

Grittibänz is made of sweet dough rised with yeast and formed to look like a man. Before I have always used a finnish recipe for pulla but this time I tried out the recipe of Swissmilk because I liked the idea of lemon zest in the dough. I replaced the cinnamon with vanilla and made couple of other small changes. The webpage Swissmilk is by the way a really good place to find ideas for baking and cooking.

Getting ready for the oven

Grittibänz

600 g zopfmehl/wheat flour

1 tsp salt

100 g sugar

1 pack dry yeast (30 g fresh)

2 1/2 dl milk

100 g butter

1 egg

zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp of grinded vanilla

(coarse sugar, raisins for deco)

* Mix flour, dry yeast, salt, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest in a mixer bowl

* place the soft butter on the top of the mixture.

* start mixing with the hook attachment and add the lukewarm milk and egg to the mixture

* Let the machine knead the dough for some minutes

* Let the dough about dobble up in volume in a warm place

* From the "bun men" and let raise again for about 30 min.

* Brush with eggwash and place the wanted decoration on the top

* Bake at 190 Celsius for about 12 min

Suprised

Wondering

The biggest smile