Pistachio Stuten With Apricot Pearls

Stuten is the German word for fine pastry bread made with yeast dough, also called viennoiserie. This one is filled with pistachios and apricot pearls made with agar, perfect for a sunday breakfast. The original recipe was with dried apricots but I don't like fruits in bread loafs, they fall out, the texture is different and the bread' shelf life is very short. Let's see if the fruit pearls have the desired effect of fruity taste without the bad sides.

• 250grams flour
• 120grams apricot puree
• 60grams milk
• 40grams butter
• 40grams pistachios
• 30grams quark
• 20grams baker's yeast
• 1 egg
• 1 eggyolk
• 1 teaspoon vanillin sugar
• 1 knife point cinnamon

If you don't have access to yeast, have a look at this instructable.

Tools:

• 24cm cake pan
  
• Lékué deco pen
• bread lame
• hand held kneading machine
• parchment paper
• drinking straws
• ice cubes

Take 20grams of the baker's yeast, crumble it into the 60ml of milk and set aside. Weigh 40grams of warm butter, add 45grams of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla sugar.

Take your hand held kneading machine and make a smooth mixture of the butter and sugar. This may take 5 minutes. Then add 30grams of quark and stir again.

Mix the knife point cinnamon with the 250grams of flour. Now you got all main ingredients ready. Stir the yeast milk with the egg, sugared butter and flour into a smooth dough. Let it rest for 1 hour.

Remove the shells of 130grams pistachios and roughly break them up.

Create 120grams of apricot puree with a blender. Heat it in a saucepan with ¹/₅th of a teaspoon agar. Now there are 2 possible ways to get edible pearls from pureed apricots. Either you fill the heated agar mix into the Lékué deco pen and drop the pearls into an iced cup with oil. Then you fish the pearls out.

Or you fill the mix into drinking straws with the Lékué deco pen and let them cool down in the fridge. I had more than needed and filled a silicon mould for extras.

Now that the dough and the filling are ready, prepare the cake tin. Lay the parchment paper on the cake tin and cut out the corners of the parchment paper to make it fit the pan.

Time to mix the pistachios and the apricot pearls under the dough. If you didn't pick the first option to make the pearls, take the filled drinking straws out of the fridge, press the agar mix out and cut them into small pieces.

Lay the dough into the cake pan. Crack an egg and separate the egg yolk. Mix it with a tablespoon of water and coat the top of the bread with it. Let the bread dough rise for another 20 minutes and preheat your stove to 180°C (350°F). Then use the bread lame and score the bread in the mid.

Bake it for 30 minutes at 180°C (350°F). I made the mistake and let some egg yolk coating gather in little puddles on the uneven top. These got very dark, although the taste of these spots was not burned.

During the baking process the apricot pearls merged perfectly with the dough. Exactly what I wanted, no special fruit parts to chew on but all the taste. But wait, what about the extra stuff in the silicon moulds? Here it is:

Enjoy your bread!