This recipe is not well-known, not even in the Netherlands, but in the area around my hometown, people eat krollen, aniseed flavoured bread rolls, in early December, around St. Nicholas Day (Dec 6). It’s not strongly associated with the holiday itself. “Krol” means “curl” in our dialect and the rolls are shaped a bit like a curl.
Krollen - makes 12
300 gr all purpose flour
200 gr wholewheat flour
2 teaspoons of ground aniseed
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
optional: 1 tablespoon of whole anise if you can find it
3 tablespoons of sugar
pinch of salt
1,5 tablespoon of dried yeast
50 gr melted, cooled butter or oil
1 egg
300 ml milk
Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl (flour, sugar, salt, spices).
Mix milk, egg, yeast and butter/oil together in a different bowl.
Put the dry ingredients on your work surface, make a little well in it, add the wet ingredients, knead into a dough. When done, put in a covered bowl and let rise at room temperature for about an hour or until it’s doubled in size.
After an hour, knock back the dough then divide in 12 portions.
To create the typical curls, roll each ball into a little sausage then shape into a curl. Alternatively, I’m sure they will taste perfectly fine as normal rolls. Put the little curls on a baking tray lined with parchment, cover and let rise again for about an hour.
Bake for 12 minutes at 210 degrees.
Traditionally, krollen are eaten with butter and speculaas cookies as a topping! I’ve never made my own speculaas but those are some of the most famous cookies coming from the Netherlands. Yes, we don’t just eat sprinkles on our sandwiches, we eat cookie sandwiches too. If you eat a cookie sandwich at work no one will laugh at you.
