Kougelhopf in Colmar: what it is, what to order, what to avoid

Overview

The kougelhopf is not Colmar’s own. It belongs to all of Alsace, and to a wide band of country east of it, through southern Germany into Austria, where the same mold turns out a Gugelhupf. What Colmar offers is the Alsatian version in its natural setting: a town of bakeries where it is ordinary weekend food rather than a specialty laid on for visitors.

Physically it is a tall ring with a hollow chimney up the middle and deep, slanting flutes around the outside, dusted with powdered sugar. The Alsatian one is a yeasted dough, not a cake batter — closer to brioche than to sponge, enriched with butter, eggs and milk, with raisins through it and a whole almond sitting in the bottom of each groove of the mold, so that it comes out with an almond crowning every ridge. The crumb should be soft, slightly stringy when torn, and only gently sweet. It is a bread you eat with coffee, not a dessert.

The mold matters more than it does for most pastries. The traditional one is glazed earthenware from Soufflenheim, a pottery village in the north of Alsace, and the chimney is there so the heat reaches the middle of a thick dough. You will see these molds hanging in shop windows all over Colmar, painted with flowers; they are the real thing, and plenty of Alsatian households still bake in them.

The origin stories are many and none of them is history. One has the Magi, on their way home, rewarding their host in Ribeauvillé by giving the cake its turban shape. Another credits Marie Antoinette with carrying it from Austria to the French court. Both are pleasant and neither rests on evidence; the honest summary is that the cake is old, Central European, and nobody knows who made the first one.

What to order

The default is the sweet one, and the word on the label is usually just kougelhopf — or kouglof, the same thing in a more French spelling. It comes in two sizes that matter:

• A whole one, from small enough for two to large enough for a family table. This is how it is mostly bought, because it is mostly eaten at home.
• Individual or mini kougelhopfs, a fist-sized version for eating on the spot. If you want one now rather than tomorrow, this is the order.

Beyond the plain version, the words worth knowing:

• kougelhopf salé — the savory one, and the one visitors most often miss. The same yeasted dough, but with bacon, often walnuts and sometimes onion in place of the raisins and sugar. It is aperitif food, cut into wedges or cubes and served with a glass of white wine. If it is on the counter, it is worth trying alongside the sweet one: it is the clearest proof that this is a bread.
• Raisins soaked in kirsch — the classic touch in a careful sweet kougelhopf. The alcohol is not meant to be loud; it rounds the fruit.
• Chocolate or filled versions exist and are a modern extension. Nothing wrong with them, but they are not what the name traditionally means.

The thing that marks a visitor out, harmlessly, is treating it as dessert after a meal. It works, but it is a breakfast and afternoon-coffee bread, and the sweet one is at its most natural on a Sunday morning, torn rather than sliced neatly, with butter or jam if you like.

What to avoid

The kougelhopf fails in one main way: it goes dry. A yeasted dough with this much butter keeps for a day or two and then stales fast, and the problems below are mostly versions of that.

The shrink-wrapped kougelhopf on a souvenir shelf is the one to pass over. In the busiest streets around Petite Venise you will find them stacked in plastic beside tea towels and painted molds, with a long shelf life printed on the back. A long shelf life on a yeasted butter bread means preservatives, or a texture already closer to rusk than to brioche.

A dense, even, cake-like crumb means you have been sold a batter cake in the right shape. Many of the German and Austrian Gugelhupf recipes are exactly that, and they are good cakes, but they are a different thing; the Alsatian one should tear with a bit of pull. A kougelhopf without almonds in the ridges is a second hint that someone has cut a corner.

A heavy sugar glaze or an icing coat is a sign of a product designed to look festive in a window rather than to be eaten. The traditional finish is a light dusting, nothing more.

Be wary, too, of the painted mold as a guarantee. Shops near the old town sell decorative ones that are not meant for the oven, and a mold that is ornament-only says nothing about what the same shop sells to eat.

Practicalities

Buy it at a bakery counter, by the piece, and buy it close to when you will eat it. Bakeries bake it above all for the weekend: Saturday and Sunday mornings are when the counters carry the most and the freshest, and late on a Sunday the good ones are often sold out. Some Alsatians hold that it is better on the second day, once the crumb has settled, which is true up to a point; by the third it wants toasting.

Price follows size and the counter, so compare a few bakeries rather than trusting a figure. A large one sold far below what the bakeries around it charge is likely a batter cake or industrial; one sold far above them in a gift box is mostly the box.

The savory version usually comes by the piece or in small sizes and is easiest to find in the run-up to aperitif hour and at holiday time, when the sweet one also appears larger and richer. A dry Riesling suits the savory one; the sweet one is traditionally paired with coffee in the morning, and some prefer a glass of Gewurztraminer with it in the afternoon.

If you want to carry one home, choose a whole one from a bakery on your last morning rather than a packaged one earlier in the trip: it travels well in a paper bag for a day, and a light oven will revive it after that. Cards are taken almost everywhere, though a small amount of cash is handy at the smallest counters.