Bread Dumplings

Ingredients:

• 500 g white crusty bread
  (The bread should be a few days old and quite hard, Tipp: Already cut it when it is fresh and let dry in cubes or store it in the freezer until use)
• 250 ml (oat)milk
• 4 eggs
• 25 g butter
• 1 small onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 3 tsp parsley
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 pinch nutmeg
• 40 g flour (more if needed) 

Method:

• Chop the onion and garlic into small cubes
• Melt the butter in a large pan on medium high heat
• Add the onions and garlic to the pan and fry until translucent
• Meanwhile chop the bread in small to medium sized cubes and put in a large mixing bowl
• Add salt. pepper and nutmeg to the pan with the onions and fry for a few more seconds
• Add the milk to the pan and allow the milk to heat up (it should be hot but not boiling)
• Add the warm milk-onion mixture to the bowl with the bread and let the bread soak for 5 to 20 mins or until soft
• Meanwhile chop the parsley and mix with the eggs and
• Bring a large pot of slightly salted water to a simmer (Important the water should not be boiling when you add the dumplings, otherwise they will fall apart)
• Mix the bread milk mixture with your hands the mixture should be moist but can still have a chunky-smooth texture and pieces of dry bread in it
• When the mixture has cooled down add the eggs and mix again
• If the dough is too wet, add flour
• Use wet hands to form tennis ball sized and compact dumplings
• Carefully drop the dumplings into the hot water and cook for 15-20 minutes

(Make sure the water is never fully boiling but small bubbles are forming at the bottom of the pot)

• Tipp: Make a small test dumpling to see if they fall apart in the water. If they do fall apart, you can add more breadcrumbs and press them firmly between your hands when forming the dumplings.

• If they still fall apart, you can wrap the dough in a damp cotton towel and form a sausage-like roll, close the ends with a band and put the roll in hot (but not boiling) water for 30 min. This version of Semmelknödel is called Serviettenknödel. After cooking you can cut the roll into 1 cm thick slices and fry them in a non-stick pan to get crispy edges.

• Serve with the dumplings with your favorite sauce for example creamy mushroom-sauce

Variations: 

Spinach:

Replace 125 mL milk with 125 g frozen spinach in the base recipe

Beetroot:

Add 1 cooked and grated beetroot to the base recipe

Cheese (Käspressknödel):

Add 75 g semi hard cheese to the base recipe. After forming the dumplings, flatten them out and fry in a pan with oil until crispy. 

Recipe by Laura Lang
Photo by cookingweekends, CC