Kletzenbrot – Christmas Fruit bread from Tyrol

November 24, 2015 by Helene Dsouza 24 Comments

Kletzenbrot - Christmas Fruit bread www.masalaherb.com

My gift to you this year for Christmas are the countless delicious Christmas Food Recipes.

Even if you are not celebrating Christmas you will have a hard time resisting all the eye candy!

For today’s day I have reserved the famous and traditional Christmas Fruit bread recipe for you.

This particular Christmas bread is better known as Kletzenbrot in German.

Kletzen is the Austrian/Bavarian/South Tyrol (South Tyrol is North Italy nowadays) word for dried Pears and Brot is the common German word for bread.

Updated Recipe: Take me directly to the Recipe!

The Kletzenbrot is definitely the most famous sweet fruit and nut bread in my alpine region Tyrol back in Austria Europe.

There are many other kinds of fruit and nut breads but my grandmother would mostly always make the Kletzenbrot during Christmas time.

She would make an enormous batch of Kletzenbrot, bake it in her oldern time fire oven and store it in a very cold and dry place for months after that.

Her Kletzenbrot was hard as stone, no kidding!

My grandmother was a hard working all rounder and baking was just one of the many jobs in her farmer’s life.

So besides milking the cows at 5 am and building a cycle from scrap, she would also spin threads from the sheeps at home, knit thick socks, which by the way I am still using, and also do basic chores such as washing clothes by hand.

She was a hard from scratch working lady who didn’t rest even when she was dying.

Maybe her Kletzenbrot was not perfectly soft, but at least she did it from scratch with organic products.

My father of course didn’t mind a hard Kletzenbrot, in fact he has been eating his mother’s bread since ever and therefore he enjoys the hard fruit bread more then the soft version which my mother makes.

I personaly prefer of course a soft version and that’s why unfortunately I couldn’t use my grandmother’s old recipe.

My mum has no clue what she puts into hers, she says: ” Do it au pif!” (from french translated as random, anyhow) but I need exact measurements!

So, I decided to just play around and see how it comes and after a while I finaly got the result I was looking for.

Actually my recipe is not a full traditional Kletzenbrot recipe from Tyrol, Austria.

In fact I used plain white all purpose flour instead of the commonly used rye flour.

We don’t get this dark rye flour in India and I can imagine others in this world would have a hard time finding this ingredient, so I decided to just use what everybody else can buy.

It’s not a sacrilege to use white flour since I have seen folks making the Kletzenbrot at times like this.

Oh and I modified the traditional recipe in one more way.

You see the Kletzenbrot is a dough with way more fruits and nuts then dough itself.

Traditionally one would first make that fruit and nut dough and wrap that one into a plain dough.

I have left that out because I always forget to do that and I like to simplify things.

When you look at the ingredients don’t be shocked by the amount of dried fruits and nuts vs the amount of flour in the recipe, that’s how it’s meant to be!

For the filling I have used dried fruits such as raisins (or sultanas), dates, pears (of course!), prunes and candied fruits such as Orange and lemon rind and nuts such as hazelnut and almonds.

I also spiced the Kletzenbrot filling with Cinnamon and Clove and I have added some Rum and milk as well before leaving the mixture to rest over night.

You could leave out the dark rum, I wouldn’t.

To store the Kletzenbrot either wrap it in a damp cloth and keep in the fridge for max. 3 weeks.

Usually we make big batches of this particular Christmas bread and either give some away to family and friends or cut the loafs in half, wrap into cling film and store in the deep freezer, so that we can take them out anytime, defrost and enjoy them the rest of the year.

Normally of course the Kletzenbrot is devoured in days so our last loafs in the freezer get over by Easter.

This fruit bread makes a great homemade Christmas gift which everybody enjoys!