Briochekipferl (Viennese Butter Crescents)

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large mixing bowl
• •Rolling pin
• •Baking trays lined with parchment
• •Pastry brush for egg wash
• •Wire cooling rack

Instructions

1. 1

   Wake the yeast

   Warm the milk until it's just lukewarm, about 37°C. It should feel like nothing on the inside of your wrist: not hot, not cold. Stir the dried yeast and a teaspoon of the sugar into the milk and let it sit for ten minutes. When it turns frothy and smells like bread, the yeast is alive and ready. If nothing happens, your milk was too hot and you've killed it. Start again with fresh yeast and cooler milk.

   If you can find fresh yeast (Germ, as Austrians call it), use 20g crumbled directly into the warm milk. Fresh yeast gives a slightly rounder flavor that dried yeast doesn't quite match.
2. 2

   Build the dough

   Put the flour in a large bowl. Add the remaining sugar, Vanillezucker, salt, and lemon zest. Toss it together with your fingers so the zest gets distributed through the flour and starts releasing its oils. You'll smell it immediately. Make a well in the center, pour in the frothy yeast mixture and the two eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough comes together, then turn it out onto a clean surface.

3. 3

   Knead and enrich

   Knead the dough for five minutes until it smooths out and becomes elastic. It will be slightly sticky. That's right. Now start adding the softened butter, a few pieces at a time, kneading each addition in before adding the next. This takes patience. The dough will look greasy and hopeless after the first piece of butter. Keep going. After all the butter is incorporated, knead for another five minutes. The dough should be soft, smooth, and pull away from the surface cleanly. It will feel alive in your hands: warm, springy, slightly tacky but not sticky.

   The butter must be genuinely soft, not melted and not fridge-cold. Leave it out for an hour before you start. Cold butter tears the gluten strands you've just built. Melted butter makes the dough greasy instead of rich.
4. 4

   First rise

   Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with a clean tea towel and put it somewhere warm. The top of the fridge works. Near a radiator works. Inside an oven with just the light on works. Let it rise until doubled in size, about one hour. Don't poke it constantly. You'll know it's ready when you press a finger gently into the surface and the indent fills back slowly, not instantly.

5. 5

   Shape the Kipferl

   Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured surface and press it down gently to deflate. Divide it in half. Roll one half into a circle about 30cm across and the thickness of a euro coin. Cut the circle into eight equal triangles, like slicing a pizza. Starting at the wide base of each triangle, roll the dough toward the point, keeping gentle tension as you go but not pulling it tight. The point should end up tucked underneath. Curve the two ends inward toward each other to form the crescent. Place them on a lined baking tray, point-side down, with a few centimeters between each one. Repeat with the second half of dough.

   If the dough springs back when you try to roll it, walk away for five minutes. The gluten is tense and needs to relax. Come back and it will cooperate. Gretel always said fighting dough is a battle you cannot win.
6. 6

   Second rise

   Cover the shaped Kipferl loosely with a tea towel and let them rise again for thirty to forty minutes. They should look visibly puffed and feel light when you lift the edge of one gently. While they rise, heat your oven to 180°C (fan) or 200°C (conventional). Position the rack in the upper third.

7. 7

   Glaze and bake

   Brush each Kipferl with the egg yolk wash using a soft pastry brush. Be thorough but gentle. You don't want to deflate them after they've spent forty minutes rising. The wash is what gives them that deep golden shine you see in every Viennese bakery window. Scatter a pinch of pearl sugar over each one if you like a little crunch. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until they're a rich, even gold. Not pale. Not dark. The color of good honey. Pull them out and let them cool on a wire rack for five minutes, though I've never seen anyone in my kitchen wait that long.

   Open the oven door as little as possible during baking. Every time you open it, the temperature drops and the Kipferl lose their oven spring. Trust the timer and check once at fourteen minutes.
8. 8

   Serve warm

   Serve the Kipferl warm with good butter and Marillenmarmelade (apricot jam), or just on their own with a Melange or a cup of strong coffee. They're best within a few hours of baking, while the crumb is still soft and the crust has that faint crackle. This is good Austrian home cooking at breakfast. Mahlzeit!

Chef Tips

• •Use real Vanillezucker, not vanilla extract. A packet of Austrian Vanillezucker gives these Kipferl the rounded, warm sweetness that extract can't match. If you can't find it, bury a split vanilla pod in a jar of caster sugar for a week and use a tablespoon of that instead.
• •The lemon zest is not optional and it's not decoration. It lifts the richness of all that butter and egg. Without it, the Kipferl taste flat. Zest the lemon on a Microplane so you get the oils without any bitter white pith.
• •Room-temperature eggs matter here. Cold eggs tighten the butter in the dough and make it harder to knead smoothly. Pull them out of the fridge an hour before you begin, or sit them in a bowl of warm water for ten minutes.
• •If you're making these for a weekend breakfast, mix and knead the dough the night before and let it do its first rise overnight in the fridge. The slow, cold fermentation develops more flavor. Pull it out an hour before shaping to take the chill off.

Advance Preparation

• •The dough can be made the night before and refrigerated after the first rise. Punch it down, cover tightly with cling film, and store in the fridge for up to 12 hours. Let it come to room temperature for one hour before shaping.
• •Baked Kipferl freeze well for up to one month. Cool completely, freeze on a flat tray, then transfer to a bag. Reheat in a 160°C oven for five minutes straight from frozen. They come back to life beautifully.
• •Shaped but unbaked Kipferl can be frozen after the second rise. Place the tray in the freezer until solid, then bag them. Bake from frozen at 180°C for 20 to 22 minutes, adding a few minutes to the normal time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 60g)