The smell of poppy seeds and vanilla fresh from the oven is the best thing ever. Combine that with buttery streusel and a fresh yeast bake and you are basically in heaven. Sorry, but that’s how I feel about these poppy seed streusel taler. Taler, by the way is an old German currency. These days we use the word to describe baked goods that are flat like a pizza but smaller. Usually, taler are topped with pudding or stone fruits and streusel. Which, of course is another German word. It used to have the same meaning as the word streu. Which describes the materials you put on the flour of a stable so animals can sleep on it (like hay or grass). Yep, it’s true. Now you know.
Since stone fruits aren’t really in season anymore and pudding is not what I like best on my baked goods, I decided to go with one of my favourite ingredients: poppy seeds. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that I do not fool around when it comes to these seeds. Because two or three tablespoons won’t cut it if you want to make them the centre of all attention. You’ll want a lot more poppy seeds for a juicy and aromatic filling.
I don’t know how you handle this poppy seed business in other countries, but here in Germany you can buy several kinds that are already processed for baking. Most of the time that means they are steamed and ground. I almost never buy these though. They are not very shelf stable. I prefer to grind whole poppy seeds myself whenever I need them.
To grind poppy seeds, it’s best to do that in a small food processor or coffee grinder. (A mortar and pestle works, too.) If you do not have access to ground poppy seeds, you can use them whole. But the filling will come out a bit different as it won’t stick together as well. But as always, this recipe should be used as a guideline only. If you don’t like poppy seeds, you can use other fillings, like jam or nut butter. Anyway, I hope you try these Poppy Seed Streusel Taler. If you do, let me know!
Ingredients
For the yeast dough:
250 g all-purpose flour
50 g sugar
5 g salt
160 ml soy milk (room temperature)
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
50 g margarine, cubed
For the poppy seed topping:
100 g poppy seeds, ground
1 tablespoon arrowroot powder (or cornstarch)
2 teaspoons flax seeds, ground
50 g sugar
4 tablespoons soy yoghurt
For the streusel:
90 g all-purpose flour
50 g margarine
30 g sugar
1 envelope (8 g) vanilla sugar
Instructions
To make the dough, combine all-purpose flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Add soy milk and yeast and let sit for five minutes.
Add margarine and use your hands to knead the dough for about five minutes.
Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let rest for 60 minutes.
While the dough rests prepare filling and streusel topping.
For the filling, mix poppy seeds, arrowroot, flax seeds, sugar and soy yoghurt.
Set aside.
To make the streusel topping, mix flour, margarine, and sugars and use your hands to knead the dough until it starts to form crumbs.
Once the dough is ready, line a baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 200°C.
Divide the dough into four equally sized pieces.
Form each piece into a ball and roll it into a circle about 13 cm in diameter.
Place circles on the baking sheet.
Top each circle with a quarter of the poppy seed filling and sprinke streusel on top.
Let rest for 20 minutes.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the yeast dough is golden-brown.
Remove from oven and let cool before serving.
7 comments
I have had this before at a pastry shop it and it was amazing. Thanks for the poppy seed streusel taler recipe so I can try it myself.
I love dense poppy seed bakes after living with some friends of Polish background years ago! But I did not know of the variety of poppy seeds that could be bought to make such bakes – would like to have a go at them one day! Your taler sounds lovely – but I have never seen this sort of poppy seed bake with streusel, possibly because this sort of baking is not so common in Melbourne.
This kind of bake is definitely an Eastern European thing that came to Austria and Germany. I love Polish and Czech pastries.
Hi Mihl,
Thank you so much for your quick reply and for explaining about the frozen yeast turning into liquid when thawed – it would be quite a surprise because I had not thought about that!
With your help I feel much more confident and I will be baking the Taler without (too much) worrying :) I will let you know about the final result.
Thank you for everything – I also want to mention that I love your Christmas baking E-book that I printed out years ago when it was on your blog!
How did they turn out?
Hi Mihl,
And another recipe of yours that I can’t wait to bake – it just looks so good and I love poppy seeds and vanilla! I will grind my own poppy seeds and I would like to use fresh yeast because last time I was in Germany (I live in East side of the Netherlands, close to Germany) I bought three ‚wúrfel frischhefe‘ from Rapunzel. Each ‚wúrfel‘ weighs 42 grams and I put them in the freezer so they would not go bad.
I bake a lot, but not with yeast and so I am not brave enough to make this recipe with the fresh yeast without asking you first if the poppy seed streusel taler will come out right – what do you think? And how much of the fresh yeast should I use and would the directions of mixing it (flour, sugar, salt, soy milk and yeast all together) be different?
Can I ask one more question about the margarine you use in the yeast dough and in the streusel? Is it a hard block type of margarine or the softer one in a tube? If it is the block type I suppose it must be at room temperature to be able to knead it in the dough?
O.k. questionnaire is done ;)
Hey Yvonne, thank you for your great questions. Fresh yeast is so much better than dry yeast, it’s a good choice. (I use it too and most of the time just convert to dry for the blog recipes.)
Usually you use one cube yeast for 500 to 1000 g of flour. For a sweet recipe like this I’d recommend half a cube. Directions are the same but if you froze it, you should dissolve it in the warm milk and then add the mixture to flour, sugar, and salt. (Frozen yeast sometimes turns into liquid when thawed, so it’s best to just dissolve it in liquid first thing.) Wait for 10 minutes or until bubbly and then add the margarine. The margarine should have room temp, of course! Sorry I forgot to mention that.(I use Alsan brand, which us a block, but it’s not super hard.) Hope this was helpful. Have fun baking!
Comments are closed.