Recipe: Dried Pears Bread from the Pucher farm women

Harmony in the culinary Salzburg Advent

The Advent in Puch in the middle of the Salzburgerland has started with the church concert of the Musikkapelle Puch and with the first Advent markets atmospherically. Also the first Krampusse were to be seen already, which move with the holy Nikolaus around 6 December by the localities. What you can expect in the next days and weeks before Christmas in Puch, you will find in the calendar of events.

Regional delicacies at the Advent market

A highlight of Advent in Puch, and has been for over 20 years, is the Advent Market in St. Jakob am Thurn. The small idyllic Christmas market on the church square in front of the pilgrimage church of St. Jakob the Elder offers you everything you need for an Advent outing with the whole family. Hot mulled wine, cider or punch, delicious bosna, hot chestnuts and waffles, homemade handicrafts, regional delicacies and cute alpacas. In addition, a festive program in the church and a nativity scene exhibition in the Loretto Chapel by local nativity scene builders. And all this on every Saturday and Sunday on the four Advent weekends and on December 8 from 2 to 7 pm.

The farm women are coming!

On this 2nd Advent weekend, for the first time the Pucher Bäuerinnen are present for 2 days with a stand at the Advent market! The preparations are underway and it is baked, tinkered and decorated to get everything ready for the weekend. In addition to freshly baked Pofesen, there will also be gingerbread Santa Claus and Christmas pastries such as fruit breads. One of them is the typical Austrian Kletzenbrot, about which you will learn more in a moment and also a recipe of the Pucher Bäuerinnen is waiting for you. But first...

Who are the Puch farm women?

The farmers" wives from Puch are a cross-generational community that sticks together and exchanges ideas, gets tips or provides information at various meetings and, very modernly, also regularly via Whatsapp. Together, the elected local farmer Andrea Hager and her committee as food representatives, for example, go to the elementary schools in Puch and St. Jakob on World Food Day with a "Healthy Snack" or show the children how agriculture works in Austria at a "School Meets Farm" action day. There, they are explained dairy farming, can try their hand at the milking parlor, make butter themselves, and craft sustainable purses from milk cartons.

For years, they have organized continuing education courses, such as cooking classes or herb walks, and a Christmas breakfast for the Pucher farm women. For years they have been running or walking together in the Salzburg Women`s Run and joint excursions are planned. Like once a year an alpine pasture hike with the Oberalm farm women or excursions, which led us most recently to the Haslauer Family in Elsbethen. There we were shown the newly built sheep barn and given insights into the farm cheese dairy including tasting.

According to statistics from the Chamber of Agriculture, there are about 130,000 women farmers in Austria and 4,778 local women farmers, of which there are 120 in Salzburg. If you are interested, you can find out more about the farmers" wives organization in Austria here.  In Puch there are about 35 farms, where 2 to 4 generations of women farmers work together on the farm.

Fresh Pofesen & hot mulled wine

At the Advent market you get this 2nd Advent weekend from the farmers, in addition to the freshly baked Pofesen also various Christmas pastries, such as apple bread or Kletzenbrot. But what exactly is a Kletzenbrot and how you can prepare it yourself, you learn now:

Kletzenbrot - the spicy, sweet fruit bread

Wondering what kletzen are and what they have to do in a loaf of bread anyway? It"s not that easy to explain, because there is no standard recipe. From region to region, or even from house to house, and from generation to generation, there are differences in the shape, style and ingredients. The fact is, it is baked in Austria at Advent and is a tasty Christmas pastry made from dried fruit.

Some love it, others hate it! Whereby it is also difficult to say "I don"t like Kletzenbrot", because there are different variations and flavors of the sweet, spicy Kletzenbrot. The main product is of course the kletzen, which are dried pears that give the bread its typical taste. If you don"t like them, then it"s clear and you don"t even need to gloss over it.

Not all Kletzenbrot is the same

However, the rest of the ingredients may differ from Kletzenbrot to Kletzenbrot. Some bake the Kletzenbrot with an ordinary brown bread dough, others use a yeast dough. And there are almost no limits to the contents: besides the main ingredient of kletzen, in one recipe there are dried plums, in another dates or figs. Also with the spices one can distinguish at the taste some. What for some cinnamon and cloves, is for the other coriander, fennel and new spice. And then, of course, alcohol comes into play. In terms of taste, it certainly makes a difference whether you use a clear schnapps or a dark rum.

But one thing is clear with any Kletzenbrot - the effort. Anyone can bake cookies, but baking a really good Kletzenbrot is something for true experts!

You have 3 possibilities to get a Pucher Kletzenbrot:

1. from the Advent market

The Pucher farmers" wives are already busy baking and will have Christmas pastries, such as Kletzenbrot and apple bread, for sale at the Advent Market in St. Jakob am Thurn on December 3 and 4.

 2. from the farm

The wood-burning oven in the garden of the Meißl family is regularly heated during Advent. Simply pre-order organic Kletzenbrot at 06245/75467 and pick it up fresh from the oven at the Moosbauer in Puch in Leitnerstraße.

3. according to recipe

Get the ingredients and bake your own Kletzenbrot! So goes`s

Recipe for a Salzburg Kletzenbrot

One of the popular Kletzenbrot recipes which the Pucher farmers" wives like to use or take as a basis for their own family recipe comes from the book "The cookbook of the farmer"s wife" by Elisabeth Heinrich from 1951 (3rd edition, Pfad Verlag), which is already used in our house in the 3rd generation.

In the preface the authoress writes, the cookbook is to be ".... a reference book in all questions of the kitchen and Vorratshaltung for the farmer woman and may help some young farmer woman over uncertainties. In household courses and in agricultural schools this book is to deepen the acquired specialized knowledge and to facilitate the learning for the rural youth." And exactly in this sense fits also the recipe of the Kletzenbrot (P. 139), that in the book already in 3 kinds is represented. Here are the recipes and helpful tips for your first or next Kletzenbrot, a...

Kletzenbrot Salzburg style:

Ingredients - filling: ½ kg Kletzen (dried pears) | ½ kg Zwetschken | ¼ kg figs | 10 dag Weinbeerln or raisins | 15 dag nuts | 10 dag hazelnuts | 10 dag Aranzini (candied bitter orange peel ) | 1 KL cinnamon | cloves | 1/8 liter schnapps or 1/16 liter rum.

PREPARATION:

1. Boil and dice the dried cucumbers and plums and put them in a bowl.
2. Add the finely chopped nuts and the diced aranzini.
3. Mix the ingredients with the spices and alcohol and leave in a warm place overnight.

From here on there are now 3 variants:

1. body without bread

A loaf is formed from the filling and baked like ordinary bread.

2. mass with bread

From the filling a loaf is formed, which is wrapped in a rolled out yeast dough (25 dag flour | 1 dag yeast | 1/8 liter milk | salt). Let the dough rise and bake the Kletzenbrot for 1-2 hours, depending on its size.

3. bread in the mass

A small part of the briefly risen yeast dough (40 dag flour | 2 dag yeast | 10 dag sugar | 2 dl liters of milk | 1 egg | salt) is kneaded into the filling, which thus becomes looser. The new filling with dough is folded into the rolled out yeast dough and set aside to rise for 1-2 hours.

Other options & tips:

Many do not cut the dried fruit, but mince it to a fine mass.

Instead of a yeast dough, brown bread is also popular.

Spices such as coriander, fennel, new spice, lemon zest and caraway seeds are also popular.

Why use only one alcohol? Many simply mix schnapps and rum.

It is best to store the Kletzenbrot in the refrigerator, wrapped in a damp cloth.

What makes a good Kletzenbrot?

First of all, it has to look good and catch the eye right away. Since such Christmas breads are understandably not exactly cheap, of course, much importance is attached to the appearance. One should smell it best already from far - if it comes freshly from the furnace. Good Kletzenbrote also do not fall apart when cutting or crumble in the hand. Ideally, it is also not sticky and can be simply spread with butter, just like a normal slice of brown bread. And when you have it in your mouth, it should not only taste good, but also not stick to your teeth and palate, or too large pieces of dried fruit stand out dominantly. Too much or too little sweetness, or too much acidity of the lemon can also affect the taste.

Enjoying Kletzenbrot at the Advent market

As we all know, tastes are different and everyone has his or her own taste preferences. Just try the Kletzenbrot and get one at the Advent Marktet in St. Jakob am Thurn or at the Moosbauer in Puch.

If you try the recipe of the Salzburg Kletzenbrot, let us know how it turned out and write us in the comments or link us on Instagram under @visitpuch.

This is the way to St. Jakob am Thurn: