Spotlighting our Fundraisers: Festive Baking with the Fermentarium
In December, the Fermentarium, who run fermentation courses in London, supported Breadwinners and other baking-related charities with the sale of a festive baking guide. Simon from the Fermentarium tells us all about it.
Pictured: Finnish joulutorttu
Sugar, spice & all things nice!
Last December the Fermentarium launched the Festive Baking Revival with a plan to bake a new festive bread or cake every day up till Christmas. Lockdown had been hard, but on a positive note, many people had tried their hand at baking sourdough bread - and so we wanted to take them along on an exploration of festive baking.
It seemed the right time to bake a bridge to continental Europe, and we were not disappointed. In fact ,we found that the continent is positively teeming with festive treats.
The 6th December, St Nicholas Day, gives rise to pfefferneuse, or pepper nuts, in Germany, which are spiced with pepper, like ones in Holland. In Switzerland, there are little sweet dough figures called grittibanz and Krampus buns shaped like the devil-like figure who was used to scare naughty children.
Pictured: Swiss grittibanz buns
There are many spiced biscuits, differing from region to region, but we loved pierniczki from Poland; the dough would be made months before Christmas and, in a year of the birth of a child, an amount would be kept back for baking at the child’s wedding. We made mince pies with a sourdough pastry, and Finnish joulutorttu which are windmill shaped crusty pastries with jam in the middle. Then came cat-shaped buns from Sweden called lussekatter to celebrate St Lucia’s Day on the 13th December.
Many countries like a braided sweet bread, too. We included cozanoc from Romania, which has braids filled with walnut paste, and the Jewish challah. Across Hungary and Slovenia, rolled sweet dough cakes are filled with walnuts or poppy seeds; we included bejgli from Hungary and potica from Slovenia.
Pictured: Swedish lussekatter
Many regions of Italy have their own sweet bread but we stuck with pannetone; from Germany we had marzipan-filled stollen. We worked through many more cesnica, a bread from Serbia for tearing; christopsomo from Greece, adorned with a Byzantine cross. There was julekake from Norway which, via the Vikings, gave us the word for cake and Roscon de Reyes from Spain to celebrate Twelfth Night. We also loved perekladanets, a layer cake, possibly descended from ancient Egypt, that can be found across the Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia and black bun, a rich spiced fruit cake in a pastry crust that welcomes visitors on Hogmanay in Scotland and more besides.
However, one of my personal favourites was kletzenbrot which was created by farmers in Tyrol, Austria, to sustain them through the bleak mid-Winter. It is a dark rye and wheat loaf stuffed with dried pears.
Pictured: Austrian kletzenbrot
It was a wonderful month of baking and not only did we discover the variety and wealth of festive bakes across Europe, but we also discovered that cakes, like dreams, have no borders.
The recipe booklet for all these amazing treats is still available and could be enjoyed year round, not just in the festive period. Why not bake something new this Easter?
Donations from the sale of the e-book are still going to Breadwinners.
The Fermentarium runs a wide range of fermentation courses in London and online, including in sourdough baking and kombucha. You can take a look at our current live online courses by clicking the link below.
If you are interested in baking, you should also check our our Beginners Sourdough Kit, with ingredients and equipment for becoming a sourdough pro!