Beerawecka: The Alsatian Christmas Loaf of Dried Fruit
The name translates as "pear bread" and both words are a bit of a lie. There is so little bread in the loaf that you will not spot it in a slice, and the pears share the space with figs, apricots, prunes, raisins and candied citrus peel. Cut it open and it looks more like pressed dried fruit than like bread.
Beerawecka is an Alsatian Christmas loaf of dried fruit and nuts steeped in brandy, held together by nothing but a handful of spiced dough kneaded in among them - the densest thing you will find in the Alsatian corner of French cuisine.
What Beerawecka Means and Where It Gets Baked
In Colmar and the villages around it, the word is spelled Beerawecka with two e's; a little further north, in the Bas-Rhin, one is enough: Berewecke. So the Alsatians cannot even agree on the spelling, let alone on the recipe. The second half of the name is certain: Wecka is Alsatian for a roll or a small loaf, from an old German word for wedge, after the long tapered shape of the bread. The first half is probably Beera, pear - except that putting the two together rests more on what the bakers who sell it will tell you than on any dictionary. Beerawecka is the Alsatian branch of a bread that the whole of southern Germany and the Alpine countries know - the only French thing about it is the passport. Just across the Rhine, in Baden, practically the same loaf is called Hutzelbrot, in Austria Kletzenbrot - both after the dialect word for dried pears. Swiss cuisine claims its Birnbrot as its own heritage, without a word about Alsace. And in South Tyrol, Italian cuisine bakes Zelten, richer in butter and sugar, its name from selten, rare - because it is made once a year.
Where Beerawecka Came From and the Stories People Tell
The history of this bread is a peasant one, and nobody can put a date on it: the orchards gave more pears in autumn than anyone could eat, the dried fruit had to be put to some use over the winter, and the spices - cinnamon, cloves, star anise - came up the Rhine. Who baked the first loaf, and when, nobody knows; not even the French Wikipedia has a source to point to. The internet, on the other hand, knows everything. According to a widespread legend, beerawecka began as a bread of the Alsatian Jewish community for Passover and supposedly takes its name from the Yiddish Pessa'h; Christians then adopted it for Christmas. Dozens of French blogs copy this word for word and not one of them names a historian, an archive or a dictionary. The English-language press then ran with the legend so eagerly that it turned a winter bread into a spring dessert for the April holidays. Alsatian bakeries could not care less. They go on baking for winter.
Fruit in Kirsch and Just Enough Dough to Bind It
The main ingredient is dried pears, joined by figs, apricots, prunes, raisins, candied orange and lemon peel and a handful of walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds. All of it soaks overnight, sometimes for several days, in kirsch or plum brandy, to soften and soak up the liquor. Only as much dough goes in as it takes to hold the fruit together, and it is worked in piece by piece right among the fruit - it is glue, not bread, and you will not see it in a slice; that ratio is exactly what tells an honest loaf from an industrial one. The spices are the same as in bredele, the Alsatian Christmas cookies: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, anise, star anise. Anyone who knows Christmas fruitcake will recognize it here, only with nearly all the batter thrown out and just the fruit and nuts left. And then doused in brandy, a step that would suit fruitcake nicely too.
There is no rushing it. The flavor only settles after a few days, plenty of people let it ripen for two or three weeks, and wrapped in cloth or foil it keeps for weeks, months even, so they say. That makes it a good present, one nobody has to eat right away. It is eaten in thin slices, with coffee, with mulled wine, or - as the Alsatian pastry chef Christine Ferber recommends - with a glass of Gewurztraminer. It is easy to find from late October to New Year, at the Christmas markets in Colmar and in Strasbourg, and when you do buy one, look at the cut surface: the more fruit and the less dough, the closer you are to the tradition.
A Loaf from a Colmar Pastry Shop
I found beerawecka myself in a small pastry shop in Colmar, a town that looks like a set built for a fairy tale. One dark loaf, topped with nuts and a candied cherry, cost 6.50 EUR. It was heavy and sticky, a single pressed mass without a trace of dough; the sweetness of dried pear and figs led the way, the kirsch spoke up only after a moment and the spices stayed in the background, more aroma than flavor. The dried apricots and prunes could still be picked out, the rest merged into one dense fruit mass with only the nuts left to crunch on. I brought it home as a sweet that keeps for months. It was gone almost at once.
