Polish yeast cake with crumble

My favourite yeast cake, which can be adapted in so many ways, although sometimes it’s simply best as a big, fluffy yeast cake topped with a generous amount of crumble. It’s wonderfully soft and fragrant. Highly recommended!

Note: This recipe has been updated. I used to recommend this yeast cake as my favourite version with fruit, but after many attempts I’ve found that it’s at its fluffiest without fruit… and that’s how I recommend making it now.

Ingredients for the yeast dough:

• 300 g strong white bread flour
• 1½ teaspoons dried yeast (6 g) or 12 g fresh yeast
• 125 ml lukewarm milk
• 1 egg
• 50 g butter, melted and cooled
• 45 g sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt

Additionally:

• 1 egg, for brushing

Mix the flour with the dried yeast (if using fresh yeast, first make a yeast starter). Add the remaining ingredients and knead, adding the melted butter towards the end. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place in a bowl, cover with a linen tea towel and leave to rise until doubled in size (about 90 minutes).

Grease a deep 13 x 27 cm loaf tin (or two smaller tins) with butter and dust with plain flour. Knead the dough briefly again and place in the tin. Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle generously with streusel (recipe below). Cover and leave in a warm place to rise until doubled in size, about 40 minutes.

Bake the Polish yeast cake with crumble at 180°C for about 35 minutes. Leave to cool in the oven with the door slightly ajar.

Ingredients for the crumble:

• 50 g soft butter
• 10 level tablespoons plain flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 1 x 8 g sachet vanillin sugar

Rub all the ingredients together with your fingertips to make the streusel (if it’s too wet, add more flour; if it’s too dry, add more butter).

Method for bread machine users:

Place all the yeast dough ingredients into the bread machine in the following order: liquid ingredients first, then dry ingredients, and finally the yeast. Select the ‘dough’ programme (kneading and first rise). Once the programme has finished, remove the dough, knead it lightly, and continue according to the main recipe above.

Enjoy!