Yes, Wikipedia calls this some type of dumpling, and not bread. I'd agree for the traditional German version, where it's more pan fried and separated into balls. But I grew up with this oven baked version, which sits somewhere between sweet bread and cake. It's basically a yeast leavened white bread dough, that soaks in a milk and sugar mixture while baking.
Edit:
Recipe:
500 g White flour
1 packet of dry yeast or 20 g of fresh yeast.
(For the sourdough version, use about 50g less flour and replace yeast with sourdough starter)
50 g Sugar
250 ml Milk
Mix milk, sugar and (dry) yeast
80 g Butter
Melt, and let it cool down to lukewarm, so it won't kill the yeast
1 tsp Salt
1 Egg
Mix everything and knead until it's a homogenous dough. It's gonna be quite sticky.
Let it rise for 2 hours (or half a day for sourdough), until it's approximately doubled in size.
150 ml Milk
150 g Sugar
100 g Butter
1 packet of Vanilla Sugar
Mix these in a small pan on low heat, until the butter is molten, and the sugar is mostly dissolved.
In a Pyrex (or any other oven safe vessel with tall walls) put in about half of the milk-sugar sauce.
Make 6 to 8 appx. fist sized balls out of the dough, and place them equally spaced into the dish with the sauce.
Cover and let rise for another 30 min (longer for sourdough)
Preheat the oven to 200°C. If the oven dish has a lid, put it on. Otherwise make one out of Aluminium foil.
Bake with the lid on for 25 minutes. The balls should have grown a lot, and the tops should have gone a very light touch of brown. If not, bake for another 5 minutes.
Take out of the oven, remove the lid, and use a knife to cut the balls apart where they have grown together.
Pour the rest of the sauce over the dough (make sure enough of it goes into the gaps too)
Bake without a lid for another 10 to 15 minutes, until nice and golden brown.
