A Hungarian egg rich, yeasted bread with a German name, such is the kuglóf. We had it often while I was growing up, but my fondest memory of eating kuglóf was on the sétahajó [leisure ship] on the Duna between Budapest and Visegrád, when my great aunt, Olgi néni, took me for an afternoon excursion. I could have been no more then ten... The two of us spent the trip up on deck at a beautifully laid table watching the scenery roll by, talking and munching away on delicious kuglóf and drinking ice-cold chocolate with sweet whipped cream. This was more than fifty years ago and yet the memory remains as vivid as if it was yesterday. Good times such as these tend to stay imbedded in our brain. At the same time, I cannot remember what I did three days ago.
There are endless varieties of kuglóf and my personal favourite is with raisins and lightly sprinkled with powdered sugar. But since I feed an eight year old after school, chocolate glazed kuglóf makes more sense. She took home the banana bread the other day, so reluctantly I started on the kuglóf this morning; the rummy, lemony punch cake I made failed to impress her yesterday.
There are lots of different kind of bundt pans, mine is a spring form, which makes it easy to lift out the bread. A chiffon pan will work too and in a pinch use a round cake pan with an aluminum foil tube in the center.
cooking spray
1/2 cup fine breadcrumbs
1/8 cup butter
3 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
6 egg yolks
3 tsp instant dry yeast
1 cup milk, lukewarm
4 cups flour
1/8 cup raisins [optinal]
• Generously spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray.
• Pour in the fine breadcrumbs and swirl it around the pan, coating all the sides, including the center tube.
• Place the butter the sugar and the salt in a large mixing bowl and beat it until very fluffy.
• One by one beat in the egg yolks.
• Add the instant dry yeast and the lukewarm milk.
• Add the flour with the 1/2 cup sweep method and stir to form a dough.
• Transfer to a board and kneed for 6-7 minutes.
• Shape it into a roll and place it into a prepared Bundt pan.
• [Or roll out the dough and sprinkle with raisins. Roll up it up and place it in the prepared Bundt pan.]
• Let the dough rise until it tripled or quadrupled in size.
• Preheat the oven to 325F and bake the Bundt bread for anywhere from 45 minutes up to an hour. The type of pan will determine the Bundt bread’s baking time. Halfway through cover the top with aluminum foil as not to burn. If the bottom is not the same golden brown color as the top, the Bundt bread is probably underdone.
• Remove from the oven and let it cool before slicing.
• Sprinkle with icing sugar or pour a glaze over the Bundt bread and serve.
