I dont know whats wrong with BettiBossi's Zopf recipe, here is mine, it turned out brilliant. though I did use the Zopfmehl mixture (80%white flour 20% Dinkel) from the Reformhaus
Their Baking book is great as well, none of my trails were a flop. I have made the Tiroler cake a million times.

though I have stopped my subscriptions to them , as I find their magazine boring, boring, and again boring.

Ah, but that's cheating. You need to use the Coop Zopfmehl for worst results.

Well, BB were never the best cookbooks around, but the baking books are good.
Their banana-vanilla cake is scrummy and sooooo easy - you don't even need kitchen scales!
Truffe Torte with Grand Marnier is another one I've made over and over again.

Having said that, I am now going to stop my subscription to the magazine, too. It just flogs Coop products and the recipes are soooo boring
I am dreading phoning them up to cancel, as I'm sure an argument will ensue.
Tried to find a link for this on the BB homepage, but no luck. Should I put it in writing??

i dont know a lot about cooking, but every time i eat red pesto sauce, even though i love the taste, i have to vomit it makes me so sick in my stomac(

huh??, and what does that has to do with Betti Bossi??

I wonder if this is something to do with altitude difference in CH...

Yes. We know... It's just easier to refer to "her" as opposed to "they" "them", "the artist formerly known as... " etc.


I wonder if they actually use the books. I know everyone has them and has warm feelings about them. But have the used them?

I think your MIL is just a good cook. If you are a good cook, you can take a bad recipe, or badly written recipe and fix it. I'll bet she doesn't use all the recipes but only the one she instinctively are good/better and I'll bet she instinctively knows what to do.

Fair point and couple that with myself being a poor cook, I wouldn't be able to tell anyone if BB is good or not...Just going off what I've experienced and how much good cooks value BB

O.K. I tried the BB recipe. It is missing at least 1dl of milk. Angela is right it is to dry.

But the proportions are! 1kg of flour - any idea how big that'll be

500g of flour produces a huge loaf that'll be around 750 - 810 g when finished.

Here's the proportions I use to get a zopf that Swiss friends tell me is better than most Swiss made zopf

500g of white flour
60g unsalted butter (soft)
1 tsp salt
1 generous tsp sugar
30g fresh yeast
310ml semi milk (room temp)

Combine the flour salt & butter
Mix the yeast & sugar to a liquid & combine with the milk.
pour into the flour & mix for 10- 12 mins in a food mixer with the bread hook.
place the dough in an oiled bowl covered with a damp tea towel for 1 hour.
Gently cut in two & roll out & plait
let rise for another 30 mins (covered), eggwash & bake for 30 - 35 mins at 200˚C.

I have a few of the 'old' BB cookbooks that were passed on to me from my grandmum. I mostly use the ones about cookies and cakes, and they are great.

The chocolate 'gâteau grand-mère' is our all-time favourite, the one my son demands for every birthday

I had a subscription to the magazine for about 10 years, and I noticed a huge difference when BB was bought by Coop: the magazine became an ad for Coop products and the quality of the recipes suffered a lot.

NO Egg? interesting......

The egg is smeared on top of the Zopf before baking, it doesn't go in the dough

just the yolk, to make it shiny and golden.

A bit of milk works as well, if you don't have eggs.

Yolk & a splash of milk

Isn't it just BB cooking or is it Swiss cooking? The one dish of theirs I actually find delectable is fondue. Not really cooking, just melting cheese and dipping stuff in it. There's no way for that to be bad, so they took the easy way on that one.

The other "Swiss" dishes just seem to be German dishes. Switzerland is really just a melting pot of German/French cuisine.

Just tried it, great recipe, Thanks!

The Frenchie in me will say: more of a German influence than anything else when it comes to cuisine in the German speaking part of CH. Although if you try making a fondue from scratch, you might discover that it isn't as easy as it may seem...

It is actually debatable how Swiss the origin of Fondue (and Raclette for that matter is.) Fondue is originally mostly a Savoyan dish. It was not until the first(?) World War, that it became widely known in Switzerland. Because Swiss agriculture produced rather much Cheese, the army included the recipe for Fondue into the army cookbook.
In the 1930s it was further promoted by the Swiss Cheese Union.

Raclette is of course a traditional dish in Valais, but again the same is true about Savoy.

When I was in Paris the last time I actually saw three or for restaurants, which had a sign outside, which something like the following was written:

des spécialités francaises:
-fondue
-raclette

You have no idea how wrong you are!

There aren't many "Swiss" dishes but there are plenty of more local or regional dishes, e.g. Capuns, Maluns or Conterser Bock from Grisons/Graubünden.

NEVER tell this to a Swiss. Seriously, never.

I never found that French influence in Zurich cuisine. Just calling a chicken "poulet" does not make it a French dish... I am from the Western part of German, the food at home was about the same as in Zurich (but our supermarkets offer a wider variety... but that's another story...).

The classic for German cooking would be the Dr Oetker line. So successful that they are even translated to English:http://www.amazon.com/German-Cooking...p/3767005980#_

Betty Bossi stuff is some supermarket branded marketing material. Nobody would expect seriously good receipes there...

BTW are we living in 2012, so you can go online and see what other people tried and rated highly. Biggest German receipe website: www.chefkoch.de I tried a couple of things from there, all good. The level ranges from "I am an idiot, how do I cook spaghetti?" to serious cooking.