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!

I am falling behind… I made Hot Cross Buns for Easter and am just now writing about it!  I thought that Easter was a perfect time to make these buns which I had never tasted.   While searching for a recipe, I learned that this small roll, traditionally prepared and consumed on Good Friday, is an old English tradition with quite a bit of history and superstition around it.

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.

Although my pretzels did not look perfect, they were perfectly  tasty!   The dough was simple and yielded about 18 pretzels, each made with 2 oz. of dough.  I did have trouble rolling them into a long enough piece to get the traditional looking pretzel because the dough was resisting (usually a sign that it has been overworked) but since I am not a professional pretzel maker, I just wanted to finish!   After shaping them I dipped them into a baking soda and water solution which gives them the nice brown, chewy exterior crust; sprinkled with salt, baked for 10 minutes and they were done.  Next time I would let the dough rest for 10 to 15 minutes before trying to shape it.  Next week’s entry will be Hot Cross Buns in honor of Easter!

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!