Dumpling Update: Dampfnudeln
Feb. 7th, 2012 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
multipurposegoddessThese are way outside my comfort zone. Milk-Steamed Buns with Vanilla Custard Sauce from Germany. First off, they're basically sweet yeast rolls - store-bought yeast! I haven't used store-bought yeast in years. And second, they are steamed in milk. i've never been a milk drinker and I typically substitute for it when it's called for in recipes, as the only milk I buy is pretty much immediately made into yogurt. But I have noticed in my yogurt making that the step where I heat the milk smells absolutely delicious - it's one of those warm kitchen smells that evokes safety and comfort like baking bread or roasting garlic. I don't know what memories I could have attached to it, as mom is not one to cook with milk, either, but it must be something. Anyway, the milk in this recipe is ultimately all cooked away so that dumplings brown after steaming, like potstickers. I love the results of this technique, but I'm not good at it - I tend to worry overmuch about burning (and doubly so with milk, which I'm always afraid will scald or something - recipes that heat milk always say DO NOT LET BOIL and I'm not sure what happens if it does come to a boil but I'm sure it's bad) and turn the heat too low so the liquid takes forever to boil off. But I get ahead of myself.
Anyway, the yeast bun (that's the word! Sweet bun) aspect of these is pretty straightforward - sugar, flour, yeast, eggs, butter. It's a pretty small amount of dough compared to the loaves of bread I'm used to, so I'm not absolutely sure that mine doubled in size for the first rise (I'm used to sourdough needing all day to rise, so this hour and half rise is hard to credit and it's always tough to judge whether an amorphous blob has doubled in volume), but the balls puffed up nicely while they were simmering. They look like bread on the outside, but the texture is almost like cake when you bite into them, which is pleasant. The recipe doesn't say how long after the dumplings are "steamed" to expect the liquid all to be gone, but it's implied that the milk might not even last through the initial simmering process. It took a good hour, maybe hour and half, for my dumplings to start sizzling. For my own future reference, 2 is too low a setting for this recipe, bump it up a notch. I don't know whether that long sort of resting/sort of steaming period would have done to the dumplings, but they didn't turn out terrible. in any case, the milk coats the dumplings with a sweet residue and browns up into a sort of caramel flavor that's very nice indeed.
I even made the vanilla custard sauce to go on them. Custards are pretty much a mystery to me, and I cut this one down to 1/3 the recipe which is always a little dicey, but it came out really well and in an amount that seems appropriate to my needs. The dumplings are best hot from the pan, but not bad cold, and reheat in the microwave okay.
Anyway, the yeast bun (that's the word! Sweet bun) aspect of these is pretty straightforward - sugar, flour, yeast, eggs, butter. It's a pretty small amount of dough compared to the loaves of bread I'm used to, so I'm not absolutely sure that mine doubled in size for the first rise (I'm used to sourdough needing all day to rise, so this hour and half rise is hard to credit and it's always tough to judge whether an amorphous blob has doubled in volume), but the balls puffed up nicely while they were simmering. They look like bread on the outside, but the texture is almost like cake when you bite into them, which is pleasant. The recipe doesn't say how long after the dumplings are "steamed" to expect the liquid all to be gone, but it's implied that the milk might not even last through the initial simmering process. It took a good hour, maybe hour and half, for my dumplings to start sizzling. For my own future reference, 2 is too low a setting for this recipe, bump it up a notch. I don't know whether that long sort of resting/sort of steaming period would have done to the dumplings, but they didn't turn out terrible. in any case, the milk coats the dumplings with a sweet residue and browns up into a sort of caramel flavor that's very nice indeed.
I even made the vanilla custard sauce to go on them. Custards are pretty much a mystery to me, and I cut this one down to 1/3 the recipe which is always a little dicey, but it came out really well and in an amount that seems appropriate to my needs. The dumplings are best hot from the pan, but not bad cold, and reheat in the microwave okay.