After a visit to the fruit market this morning I had breakfast at the Tea Room (Gasometerstrasse 5, Zürich) with Ms Fabelhaft and Gabriella, ostensibly to practise our German, but ha! As if. A delightfully relaxing brekky was had by all, though.
Gosh, I never knew so many people wanted the recipe for 'bircher muesli'. In my blog stats a startling high percentage of visits coming from search engines are looking for bircher muesli, of all things. I hope all you people arriving here looking for bircher muesli are happy with what you find!
Better revisit my recipe myself (been preoccupied with toast), just to make sure it is still as yummy as I remember.
Lately I've rediscovered toast.
For a while I forgot about it, indulging daily in the pleasures of fresh, soft bread. But recently I've been hauling out the toaster every morning, as much for a sense of thriftiness (thanks, Rose Prince) as for a simple delight in thick slices of slightly crunchy, hot, buttery, jam-smeared bread to accompany my morning ucp of tea.
I don't like my toast too toasty, unlike Bruno, who likes his well-browned and crunchy crunchy. I like mine with only the merest hint of colour, just enough crunch and warmth to let you know that yr not eating raw bread anymore, but something infinitely more delicious (and better suited to chilly mornings).
I whack on heaps of (unsalted) butter and smooth on some of whatever jam we've got open - at the moment we've got strawberry and vanilla, a particularly wonderful accompaniment, and some of Bruno's mum's yummy apricot jam, as well as the too-stiff cherry and vanilla jam that Sean and I made when he was here, which of course still tastes fab despite it's difficult consistency - or some honey if I'm feeling up for stickiness and mess.
I don't like too much jam or honey - I have a weird phobia about sinking my teeth into lots of sweet stuff. I always imagine my front teeth rotting away in such a concentrated sugar bath, which is why I often tear my toast into small pieces and eat those, thus avoiding biting altogether - just enough, not knifefuls.
Bread with butter and jam only really swam into view for me once we moved here and I started to make my own jam. The bread here is so fantastic that it becomes much more than just a couple of slices of cardboard or cottonwool hastily eaten before running out the door. Not only is the bread hearty and sustaining, it is, almost without exception, unsliced, so it takes a little more effort to pop it into the toaster - you gotta slice it yrself, and properly, evenly or else it won't fit into the toaster. Only after 3 years of practice can I now almost cut bread properly, and even so I still do uneven doorstops when I'm not paying attention. I think it takes a lifetime of experience : )
Buttery jam bread is about the only breakfast I can stomach during the week when I am hauled out of bed by the kiddies at an unreasonably early hour of the morning to demands of 'bix! bix!' (weetbix). I sleepily make the kiddies weetbix with hot milk (for some unknown reason they both love weetbix, Lola especially), and then set about slicing and toasting something for myself. After they've finished their weetbix the kiddies will have some bread and jam too, although I know Lola just tolerates the bread (she's not a huge bread eater, unlike Max) for the jam - one day I caught her eating spoonfuls of jam straight out of the jar with a big spoon.
On the weekends we take more time, and we'll often have eggs (soft-boiled or poached) or french toast, sometimes with the cheese box on the table as well, sometimes not. But always with bread, butter, and jam. And coffee!!
My favourite bread at the moment is a deliciously brown and malty St Galler Landbrot. It toasts fantastically - in fact, it is better as toast than fresh - and keeps well. It comes in a bumpy lump, and the crumb has a great smooth, firm texture. It's available from Migros, for the bargain price of FR2.20. Small price to pay for so much breakfasting pleasure.
phew. just finished kneading a double batch of zopf - that's a whopping 2kgs of flour bashed around by yrs truly. i've now got the ginormous forearms of a well-seasoned old sailor, and my muscles are all a-tremble from all the unaccustomed exercise.
i've been meaning to increase production of zopf loaves for some time now, as i always want to give out extra loaves to our favourite people but never have enough - usual output is a piddly 3 loaves per batch (one for us, one for bruno's parents, one for peter and steffi). but the thought of handling all that dough has quite frankly scared the pants off me. even now, the double batch of dough is threatening to break loose from the gladwrapped bowl and take over the kitchen bench, and i've only just finished kneading it! anyway, i thought i'd give it a try today. fortified myself with a few bracing cups of coffee and kneaded away...2kgs of flour, 200g butter, 1.2L of bio milk, 2 Tb salt, and it will later need the yolks of 4 eggs to glaze all 6 of the loaves i will make. crikey.
at one time i thought to go into commercial production making zopf, as everyone seems to love it. however, seeing as my maximum output has been 3 loaves which take a number of hours to prepare (admittedly much of that is spent waiting around for the dough to rise, not actively doing anything), i reasoned that it would not really be a profitable exercise. however, if i had that kitchenaid...... : ) actually, even that would probably be too small. i'd need a massive commercial mixer, and a huge oven to bake the loaves. one small domestic oven certainly wouldn't cut the mustard with that lot. well, maybe one day if we ever go back to oz i will think about it again.
now, who has been nice enough to me lately to warrant a loaf of freshly baked zopf....
(this is an old picture, taken by the lovely michael a couple of years (!!!) ago)
lo and behold - the results of a late night jam session:
pretty pleased with the result. had some for breakfast this morning and was exactly how i wanted it: still freshly red, a nice consistency, not too sweet, and with a nice tartness thanks to some well-judged lemon juice. max told me, 'mummy, you make the best jam!', which made me feel quite chuffed (usually this praise is reserved for his grosmami, and ok, it helped that i also had bought his favourite bread rolls for breakfast ).
i have to admit i took a rather haphazard approach to the actual jam-making. i took a look at the recipe for clotilde's lovely sounding strawberry jam with black pepper and mint but it takes like 3 days to make and i wanted instant gratification. so i checked out the recipe in my trusty edmonds cookbook and used that as a guide. the resulting jam is a kind of rough and ready lumpy-ish jam, not at all elegant and refined, but exactly how i imagined it to be - the type of jam you can slather thickly on fresh baked scones (ooh! more afternoon tea ideas) or hearty wholemeal or grain bread. i ended up with about 6 jars - 3 medium and 3 small. this is a good amount, i think - you can never be sure if that particular batch will turn out wonderfully or be totally awful, so this is a good amount in between: if it's great, you have enough, if it's awful there's not so much that you'll be eating it for the rest of the year.
so - a recipe of sorts:
this morning, after a long absence, atomic coffee returned to the breakfast table. yayyy! bruno's fabulous atomic coffee maker has been sitting forlornly on the bench for many a month now, so we thought it time to rejuvenate it and have some decent coffee for brekky. we'd forgotten just what excellent coffee it makes....
of course, it's all in the timing, but get it right and you can have a perfect cup of strong coffee with nicely steamed milk to savour with yr muesli or eggs or whatever. it takes a bit longer than a a basic plunger coffee, but it's SO worth it. and the machine itself looks so cool, with it's gleaming aluminium curves (but, a step towards alzheimer's with every cup?! eeek).
i've been on a bit of a muesli binge the last couple of days. can't tell whether it's the lure of plump, soft oats (i LOVE oats) or the pleasure of having some good fresh fruit after days of nutella and bread but i'm loving a big, white bowlful, all to myself (greedy, eh?).
a good bircher muesli is a beautiful thing. i don't think it is switzerland's national dish, but perhaps it should be, because it is so ubiquitous - you can find it anywhere. i really got a taste for it when i was in hospital after having lola. i always chose it for breakfast, and it would arrive in a glass bowl, fresh-fruity, yoghurty and with a cup of tea. it was all i needed to keep me going until lunch time. any other breakfast, be it gipfelis (crosissants), bread, jams etc etc always left my stomach grumbling an hour later. for some reason i have a super-fast metabolism in the morning and this was the only thing that made the grade. oh, how i have searched over the years to find something which keeps me going until lunch time..... cos when i get hungry, i get really, really GRUMPY. and IRRITABLE. and HORRIBLE (just ask max and bruno, and oh, just about every other person who has had the misfortune to face me in the morning). so you understand how imperative it has been to find this one crucial meal, and how delighted i was to find that THIS IS THE ONE THAT WORKS FOR ME. hooray!
i've been trying to upload some images of zopf, but i keep getting an error message. hrrrm.
anyway, here is a pic in one of my photo albums.
here is a recipe for swiss zopf. i got it from johanna, a swiss farmer, so i can assure you of it's swiss provenance and authenticity (i understand how important these things are to you). she had to go to hausfrau school to learn it (true! 2 years of learning how to run a household...egads).
i have to admit that i have re-posted this recipe from its original home of my old foodie egroup, 'in the red kitchen', which sadly seems to have fallen by the wayside of late. it was just too long to re-type!
zopf is basically very rich white bread. it's full of all the things that are good for you: white flour, butter, full fat milk. don't say i didn't warn you. i make this most weekends, and we eat it for an indulgent sunday morning brekky. this recipe makes enough for 4 small loaves, or 2 large ones, or 3 medium size ones. or lots of small buns. or whatever. you get my drift.
to pronounce 'zopf' with a properly swiss intonation: it isn't 'zzzopf' as in 'zoo', but 'tzopf' - get that 't' sound happening and you've got it. took me ages to get it right. sometimes i just say 'bread'.
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