Laugengebäck (called
“Lye roll” in English, if you
believe Wikipedia, though I've never heard the term) is a specific kind of bread where the
dough is immersed into a solution of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda)
before baking, resulting in a deep brown coloration.
WARNING Sodium hydroxide is dangerous, thus the name “caustic soda”. Wear
waterproof gloves and avoid contact with just about anything. If you do come in contact,
rinse first in water and then in vinegar, which will neutralize the sodium hydroxide.
Warm the milk to 35° and mix in the yeast.
Mix salt with the flour, add the milk and yeast and knead. Mix in butter and continue.
Put in an oven at 50° and allow to rise for an hour, by which time it should have
doubled in size.
Dissolve the sodium hydroxide in the water. Divide the dough into 9 pieces, about 95 to
100 g each. Roll the dough out flat into triangular form and then roll up, here an
image from einfachbacken.de:
Place the rolls on an oven tray lined with baking paper.
Allow the rolls to rise for another 30 minutes, during which they will increase in size.
Here before and after from my first attempt:
This is my first attempt, and the results don't look as good as I would like. A couple of
observations:
Rolling the dough to make the rolls is the way to go: I tried the much simpler
alternative of just shaping them, but they remained lumpy.
The dough needs to be rolled out quite thinly, much more so than
the einfachbacken.de image shows, since they will expand before baking.
Submerging the rolls in the sodium hydroxide is quite difficult. You need waterproof
gloves, and the rolls are still very soft. I need to experiment with this one.
The slits in the rolls need to be deeper than shown in my photos above.
