Hello deliciousness!  These were the tastiest treat I have made in a long time.  The recipe is from the Seven Spoons blog (a great blog and a treat to read), and although, as usual, mine did not look like those in the picture, they were outstanding.  The dough is a quick version of danish dough which is a very rich, yeasted dough.  The dough is rolled up with a mixture of cinnamon, sugars, nutmeg, orange zest and other yummies.  To gild the lily, the rolls are rolled in sugar while still warm.  They were best eaten immediately, but they were pretty tasty later in the day, and the next!  I will definitely make them again for a special occasion breakfast.

Wikipedia tells us that challah is a special braided bread used for the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.  It also lists its name in 7 other languages including that of South Africa and Romania.  This bread is rich with egg yolks and is reminiscent of brioche, but unlike brioche, has no butter.  Although the idea of braiding bread seems simple, the practice is not, as evidenced by my loaves.  I did braid two of them and left them unseeded (french toast!) and just twisted two strands of dough for the third.  As they baked they all looked very similar, showing my lack of refined technique!

This is week ten of the 52 Loaves Challenge and I am definitely seeing patterns.  The simple variety of flour type, fats added (or not), rising time, shape and whether the bread gets baked in a pan, or free form, make huge differences;  what a great learning experience.  Successful baking is all about ingredient selection, ingredient interactions, and ingredient handling and never more clearly than in bread baking where the list of ingredients is often short.  Water, yeast, flour and salt will make an outstanding baguette given the right handling…how great is that?

I just bought Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, who owns Tartine in San Francisco with his wife, a pastry chef (must get there some day!).  He is widely regarded as the best bread baker in the country and his bread sells out within hours each day.  It is quite a book and has lots of science and technique in it.  If I am feeling ambitious, I may try a recipe from that book next week…

This weeks choice was Cinnamon Swirl Bread using a recipe from the Cook’s Illustrated Family Baking Book.  The recipe was simple and the bread was easy to put together – the key to its deliciousness being the filling – plenty of cinnamon and brown sugar.  Before baking the bread I topped it with a bit of melted butter and more cinnamon and sugar.  It cannot be cut until it has cooled substantially, but like all breads, it was best the day I made it.  Butter slathered on top is always a welcome addition, but it was not necessary with this rich bread.  What a treat this bread was – a perfect example of the rewards of home baking!

Ready for the Second Rise

Baked and Ready to Eat

Straightforward bread this week – dinner rolls – hard to believe I have never made them.  They were light and fluffy and had a slightly salty taste to them; buttermilk and butter were the ingredients that added a nice richness.  Mixed by hand, they went together really quickly and the rising time was relatively brief.  They were a great accompaniment to a big salad one night, and turkey and pinto bean chili another.

For this bread, the hardest part was rolling them into balls that were actually uniform in size and nice and round.  Turns out that the  trick is to weigh each roll to achieve uniform size, and to cup your palm and roll the dough in a circle on the counter while using your thumb to prevent the dough from moving around too much.  Who knew?  This is why I persevere…

The bun is basically a yeasted roll with currants, orange zest, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, and nutmeg mixed throughout the dough.  The icing is placed on the roll after it is cooled and is in the shape of a cross.  The rolls were nice and soft in texture, looked and smelled great, but alas, I could not really taste those yummy spices.

Raisin Pecan Bread

This weeks’ bread scores a 5 out of 10.  It was a raisin, pecan loaf with a bit of whole wheat flour mixed in with the all purpose flour.  It was okay if you toasted it and added butter; it just did not really stand out on its own.  I was hoping mine would be as tasty as some I have had from bread bakeries, but alas, it did not compare.  My daughter and I agreed that some cinnamon would have made a big difference.  The recipe was from The Bread Bible and involved a lot of small steps including grinding a portion of pecans, and chopping other pecans, soaking the raisins, creating a sponge that needed a bit of time before you could work with it, and lots of rising time due to the dense nature of the loaf with the nuts and raisins.  I am going to try another recipe along these same lines in the future and see what I can come up with.   This is the reason I am testing all these different breads – failure or success, you learn something new with each one!

Breton Butter and Sugar Pastry

This weeks bread is Breton Butter and Sugar Pastry (aka Kouing Amman) a french pastry from Brittany, a region in France.  The recipe I used is from The Modern Baker by Nick Maglieri and is what is called a laminated dough, similar in its technique to croissant or puff pastry.  The first round of shaping requires you to roll the dough out to a rectangle, slather it with butter, sprinkle it with sugar, and fold it.  After each rise the dough is shaped, sprinkled with sugar, and folded.  The dough is baked in a round cake pan after having been sprinkled with sugar one remaining time, for a beautiful carmelized sugar top!  Perfect afternoon treat with tea or coffee!

Focaccia - Ready to Eat!

This weeks’ recipe from Baking with Julia yielded a beautiful, chewy focaccia.  I used rosemary, high quality extra virgin olive oil, and sea salt for my toppings.  The dough baked up beautifully with lots of air holes, and made delicious sandwich bread.  The development of the air bubbles occurs during an overnight refrigeration;  when you take the dough out to bring it to room temperature, and to rise a bit before baking, you can see and hear the air bubbles as you move the dough around.  Very cool!

Brioche on the Rise

During the 4th and 5th week of the weekly bread challenge, I tried two different brioche recipes.  One recipe called for half bread flour, half all purpose; the other called for all purpose flour only.  One had two rises, one had three and the amount of butter was different in each recipe.  Both loaves were tasty and rich, but the loaf with the bread flour yielded a much denser loaf.  Bread flour is usually used for chewy loaves (i.e. baguettes) due to its higher gluten content so that was a surprising ingredient.  Brioche is not difficult but requires a very long mixing time in a stand mixer, butter at just the right temperature in order for it to be incorporated properly, and an overnight rise in the refrigerator.  The recipe I would make again is from Baking with Julia; an excellent cookbook with outstanding instructions and explanations for all sorts of tasties!