Almond Schnecken Recipes

GRANDMA DOUGLAS'S SCHNECKEN

Steps:

• 1. To make the dough, melt the 1/2 cup butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the milk and sugar and heat just to lukewarm (about 110°F), stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour the warm milk mixture into a bowl. Stir in the yeast. Allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes, then stir in the salt.
• 2. Beat the whole egg and egg yolk together and add to the yeast mixture. Stir in the flour 1 cup at a time until you have a sticky dough. Scrape the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead for about 5 minutes, until you have a nice smooth dough. Butter a large bowl. Place the dough in the prepared bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Put the bowl in a warm place and allow the dough to rise for 2 hours, until tripled in volume.
• 3. Meanwhile, brush a 9 × 13-inch baking pan with some melted butter (or spray it with vegetable oil spray). To prepare the sugar-pecan topping, melt the butter with the brown sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. Remove from the heat and spread the mixture in the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with the chopped pecans.
• 4. Punch down the dough and turn it out of the bowl onto a lightly floured work surface. Knead for a minute, then use a lightly floured rolling pin to roll the dough into a rectangle about 15 × 12 inches and 1/8 inch thick. To make the cinnamon-sugar filling, melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat and allow it to cool. Brush the butter thoroughly over the surface of the dough. In a bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the melted butter. Roll the rectangle up, like a jelly roll, along one long edge.
• 5. Slice the log of rolled dough into 1-inch-thick slices and arrange the slices, cut sides up, in the prepared pan. Cover the pan with a piece of plastic wrap (you can spray the plastic wrap first with vegetable oil spray to be sure it doesn't stick to the dough) and allow it to rise in a warm place for about 40 minutes.
• 6. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the schnecken until golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time. Check them occasionally during the baking time, and if they seem to be browning too quickly, loosely cover them with a sheet of aluminum foil.
• 7. Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5 to 10 minutes. Turn the schnecken out of the pan while still warm by inverting the pan over a large platter or baking sheet. Serve the schnecken warm.

ALMOND SCHNECKEN

Steps:

• From one end of the finished dough, cut off a single slice that represents a generous one-tenth of the dough. Place this on a floured board, tap it out lengthwise and crosswise with pastry pin and then roll it out into an extremely thin sheet that will fit in the bottom of a large (say, 11-by- 16-inch) baking pan. (This requires patience, but at least you can be firm and aggressive: a bit of cutting, fitting and patching may be necessary, but all you really need to achieve is the covering of the entire bottom of the pan.)
• Place this thin tissue of dough in the bottom of the pan and let it rest. Roll out the remaining dough into a rectangle measuring 18 inches wide, and of whatever length it comes to when you have made it a uniform quarter-inch in thickness.
• Mix the almond paste with beaten egg until it has a spreadable consistency (adding almond extract as desired, for more flavor).
• Spread the almond paste over the entire rectangle of dough (except for 1 inch on one of the 18-inch sides) and roll the dough up into a loose ''jelly roll'' 18 inches long (rolling toward the edge left free of almond paste). Dab a bit of water along this edge with your finger and seal the roll firmly.
• Restretch the thin tissue of dough in the pan to cover the bottom completely and sprinkle it with the grated chocolate and with sugar as desired.
• Cut the roll of dough crosswise into 15 schnecken and arrange them evenly on top of the sheet in 3 rows of 5 each. Let rise in a warm place for 2 to 3 hours, or until doubled in bulk (the dough, being cold, will take a while to get going).
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Brush the tops of the risen schnecken with beaten egg, sprinkle on sugar as desired and bake for 45 minutes, or until golden brown (lower heat if they seem to brown too quickly).