Sourdough Kuchen
A fancy farm food, kuchen is a delicious dessert or breakfast item. Perfect for serving to company or holidays!
Ingredients
The Sourdough Kuchen Crust
- 250 g active sourdough starter
- ½ cup (130g) distilled water
- ½ cup (110g) whole milk
- 100 g sugar
- 687 g bread flour
- 50 g canola oil or other neutral oil
- 2 eggs
- 7 g kosher salt
Kuchen Filling
- 6 cup cream
- 9 eggs beaten
- 1½ cups sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- fruit or flavor of choice, canned peach, dried prune, fresh blueberries
Struesel
- ½ cup cold butter (one stick)
- ¾ cup sugar
- 1½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
For the Crust
- In a large bowl of an electric mixer, add the water, sourdough starter, milk, sugar, and oil. Mix by hand until it is combined.
- Add the flour and mix either by hand or with the dough hook attachment on low for around a minute until you have a shaggy dough. Let stand covered with a tea towel for 30 minutes. (Fermentolyse)
- After the 30 minutes, add the salt and eggs and knead on lowest setting on the stand mixer for 10 minutes, scrape the sides of the bowl as needed. Or once the eggs and salt are incorporated transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for 10 minutes.
- Transfer to a medium bowl. Rest covered with a tea towel on the counter for 1 hour.
- After the hour cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge overnight.
The Filling (Custard and Fruit)
- The next day, in a large saucepan combine well, the cream, beaten eggs, sugar and salt.
- Over low to medium heat, stir constantly until mixture begin to thicken. You will be able to tell as the mixture warms up that it will thicken. Once it has started thickening stir for 2 minutes then remove from the heat. Set aside.
- At this point you should prepare your fruit for layering in the bottom of the kuchen crust. *See notes*
Streusel
- Add all ingredients into a medium bowl and cut in the butter until it resembles soft coarse crumbs. Set aside.
Assembling the Kuchen
- Now it's time to put everything together! First, preheat your oven to 350℉.
- Take the dough and divide it into 5 even balls. Take one ball, place it on a lightly floured surface and flatten slightly with your hand. Then take a rolling pin and roll till it is the size of a 9 in pie plate. Add flour as needed to prevent sticking but try not to use a lot.
- Next, transfer the dough to the pie plate and press in to where it just comes up the sides of the plate. Add in your fruit/ingredient of choice and pour the custard over the top.
- Generously (emphasis on the generously) sprinkle with streusel and repeat until you have made all 5 kuchen.
- Place in the preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes until crust is golden brown.
- Cool on the counter than store in refrigerator until ready to serve.
Notes
Preparing the kind/fruit:
- Peach: Drain the peaches and slice them thin. Lay them on a paper towel lined plate to soak up the excess moisture. Less moisture is a good things.
- Blueberry: I use fresh blueberries for this. Wash the berries and then cut them in half before placing them on the crust.
- Prune: Dried plums are prunes. I cut them in fourths and lay them in the bottom.
- Sugar: Just the streusel and custard. Nothing else.