Showing posts with label sweet bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sweet bread. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Cherry Sweet Bread Twist for #TwelveLoaves

Sweet yeast dough filled with cherry jam and fresh cherries and baked into a golden twist is great for breakfast, brunch or tea time. In fact, anytime at all.

I’ve spoken here before about my love of cherries and summer and Paris so it won’t come as a surprise to a lot of you, but one of the things I most look forward to when I am back in the States for summer holidays, is cherries. I pick up big boxes of them at Costco and eat and eat and eat cherries till I just can’t eat any more. Then I eat some more. In the non-cherry growing places that we have been living lately, they are crazy expensive and I can’t bring myself to pay the price, even as a treat. The point of this whole long story is that I was thrilled when cherries were chosen as the Twelve Loaves theme/ingredient for June. Because I would be in Houston and could buy fresh cherries. HA! I guess I am too early because Costco doesn’t have them. And I made the rounds of my local supermarkets and kept coming up empty handed. Things were starting to get desperate and my Twelve Loaves deadline was looming, not to mention my growing depression over no summer cherries. Finally, on Sunday night we were at my sister’s for my mother’s birthday celebration and I was telling my woeful cherry-bereft tale (My family is very kind to put up with my food blogger problems.) when my sister said that HER nearby grocery store had cherries. Score! (Just don’t ask me what I had to pay for them. Desperate times, people!)

Ingredients
1 packet (1/4oz or 7g) active dry yeast
1/3 cup or 70g sugar
3/4 cup or 180ml very warm water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 – 3 1/2 cups or 375-440g flour plus more for kneading and sprinkling on your work surface
1 egg
1/4 cup or 60g butter, melted then cooled
1 cup or 310g good quality cherry preserves
12 oz or 340g ripe cherries

Method
Put yeast in a large mixing bowl with one teaspoon of the sugar and pour in the warm water. Let stand until foamy, about five minutes. If your yeast doesn't foam, discard and start over with new yeast.

Add in the vanilla, one cup or 125g of the flour and the rest of the sugar.  Beat until thoroughly mixed and you have a thin batter.

See that stuff on the left? Foamy yeast.



Add the cooled melted butter and the egg to the batter. Beat again.



Add in the next two cups of flour, one at a time, mixing with each addition.


When the dough gets too stiff to use beaters, switch to the bread hook or turn it out onto the counter top and knead by hand.

Continue kneading until the dough is elastic and supple.  Roll it into a ball and put it in a greased bowl (use butter or canola oil) and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, 30 minutes - one hour.



Meanwhile, stem and pit your cherries and chop them roughly.

I looked like someone had been slashing at my hands with a big knife. It was a blood bath!



When the rising time is up, punch down the dough and roll it out on a lightly floured surface, into a rectangle about 12 x 16 inches or 30 x 40cm.



Spread the preserves all over the dough with the back of a spoon.  Sprinkle on the chopped cherries.



Now roll the dough up from the long side.



Using a sharp knife, cut the roll in half lengthwise. Here’s where it gets messy because we are going to twist the two lengths together.


Turn the half rolls so the cut sides face up and twist the dough ends together on one side. Tuck them under. Gently lift one half and place it over its neighbor.



Then lift the other half and place it over its neighbor. Poke cherries back in where they try to escape as you go along. And they will try. I like to think mine would have turned out neater if I didn’t stop and wash my hands and take a photo between each maneuver, which gave it time to slump and open and release cherries.



Continue until you reach the end of the two halves, then pinch the ends together and turn them under.



Carefully transfer the whole thing to a sheet of parchment paper cut to fit your baking pan, then slide it into your pan.

Tidy up by putting escaping cherries back in the folds and using a paper towel or kitchen roll to wipe the parchment clean of jam around the dough. More is going to leak out while it bakes but we can’t worry about that.



Put in a warm place for the second rise of about 45 minutes.

When the time is almost up, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.



Bake your loaf in the preheated oven about 35-40 minutes or until it is golden brown. Check it about halfway through. If it’s browning too fast, cover with foil for the remainder of the baking time. Do as I say, not as I do. As you can see, mine’s a bit too brown. Ironically, I was busy writing these instructions while I let it overbake.



Enjoy! My mother and younger daughter assured me that, looks aside, it was still delicious.


If you love cherries like I love cherries, this month’s Twelve Loaves is for you! Check out all the gorgeous cherry recipes from my fellow bakers:





Would you like to join us this month? Choose a recipe featuring cherries of any kind - fresh, dried, canned, jam, or preserves. Whatever you bake (yeasted, quick bread, crackers, muffins, grissini, braids, flatbreads, etc.) have fun and let's have a delicious month of bread with cherries. Let's get baking!

If you’d like to add your recipe to the collection with the Linky Tool this month, here’s what you need to do!

1. When you post your Twelve Loaves bread on your blog, make sure that you mention the Twelve Loaves challenge in your blog post; this helps us to get more members as well as share everyone's posts. Please make sure that your bread is inspired by the theme!

2. Please link your post to the linky tool at the bottom of my blog. It must be a bread baked to the Twelve Loaves theme.

3. Have your Twelve Loaves bread that you baked this June 2014, posted on your blog by June 30, 2014.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess.  #TwelveLoaves runs so smoothly thanks to Renee from Magnolia Days and Liz from That Skinny Chick Can Bake.


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Strawberry Cheesecake Sweet Bread for #TwelveLoaves

Think brioche with a little extra sugar and cream cheese added to the sweet dough instead of butter and you get the idea of how this is going to taste. Add in some good quality strawberry jam, fresh strawberries and even more cream cheese for the perfect snack or breakfast loaf. It’s great straight out of the oven and fabulous toasted. 

This month Twelve Loaves is baking up bread with strawberries. The whole time I was away in Uganda, I was mulling this over in my mind. I have the ability to work on and work out a recipe with one section of my mind, even while the rest of me is reading a book or shopping or bouncing along dusty trails or even cooking something else. Perhaps it’s my super power. Anyway, this came to me between wild animals and waterfalls. Would it be possible to bake a yeast bread using cream cheese instead of butter for the fat? I couldn’t wait to get home to start testing.

I am delighted to report that not only is it possible, it’s delicious.

Ingredients
For the dough:
1 packet (1/4 oz or 7g) dried yeast (I use Fleischmann’s Rapid Rise.)
3/4 cup or 90ml whole milk
3 cups or 375g flour
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or 60g full fat (not whipped) cream cheese
1 egg yolk

For the filling:
1/2 cup or 120g cream cheese, chilled
3 1/2 oz or 100g fresh strawberries (about six medium-sized)
1/4 cup or 80g good quality strawberry jam

Egg white to glaze
Optional topping– about 1 oz or 25g pearl sugar

Method
Warm your milk slightly (I use a quick zap in the microwave.) and then add in one tablespoon of the sugar. Sprinkle on the yeast, stir and set aside for a few minutes. Your yeast should get foamy.

Add your three cups of flour into the mixing bowl of your stand mixer with the rest of the sugar and the salt.

Add in milk/yeast mixture along with the egg yolk and mix with the bread hook.

It’s going to look dry and like it won’t come together.

You may need to stop the mixer and scrape the dough off the hook and put it back in the bowl and then keep mixing but soon, you will have homogeneous soft dough.



Now add in half of the cream cheese and mix until fully incorporated. (It’s like adding butter to brioche.)



Now add the second half of the cream cheese and mix until it is incorporated. Form the dough into a ball with your spatula and leave to rise for about an hour in a warm place. I usually put the bowl in my kitchen sink which has been partially filled with hot water.



Meanwhile, prepare your bread pan by greasing it with butter or non-stick spray or lining it with baking parchment. I am a huge fan of lining with parchment.

Right before your hour rising time is up, hull and chop the strawberries. Don’t do this too far ahead or they will get wet and mushy.




The dough after an hour rising time
On a well-floured surface, push your dough out into a rectangle of about 14” x 12” or 34cm x 30cm.

You can use a rolling pin if you really want to but this is a soft dough and I just pressed it out easily with my hands.


Spread it with the strawberry jam and sprinkle on the chopped strawberries. Cut your chilled cream cheese into small cubes and scatter them out on the jam as well.




Start rolling up the dough on the long side.

When you have a tight roll, seam side up, fold each half into the middle.



Gently turn the dough over and lay it fold side down in your prepared loaf pan.



Allow to rise in a warm place for another hour, but set your timer for 45 minutes.  When it rings, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Don’t forget to set the timer again for the last 15 minutes of rising time.

After one hour rising time


When your full hour is up, beat your egg white and brush it on the loaf with a soft pastry brush.


Sprinkle with pearl sugar, if desired.

Bake 45 minutes or until done in your preheated oven. Ever since making the peanut butter and chocolate braid http://www.foodlustpeoplelove.com/2014/02/chocolate-peanut-butter-braid.html  last month, I’ve been using David Lebovitz’s tip of measuring the internal temperature of a loaf to determine doneness. A properly baked loaf is 180°F or 82°C or in the middle.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10-15 minutes before slicing. If you can wait that long.


Enjoy!






February was a delicious month of Chocolate breads! Now we are ready for spring and chose Strawberries for our March theme!



Would you like to join us this month? Choose a recipe featuring strawberries. (It could be a bread accented with fresh or dried strawberries or even strawberry preserves!) Whatever you bake (yeasted, quick bread, crackers, muffins, grissini, braids, flatbreads, etc.) have fun and let's have a delicious month of bread with strawberries. Let's get baking!

If you’d like to add your recipe to the collection with the Linky Tool this month, here’s what you need to do!

1. When you post your Twelve Loaves bread on your blog, make sure that you mention the Twelve Loaves challenge in your blog post; this helps us to get more members as well as share everyone's posts. Please make sure that your bread is inspired by the theme!

2. Please link your post to the linky tool at the bottom of my blog. It must be a bread baked to the Twelve Loaves theme.

3. Have your Twelve Loaves bread that you baked this March, 2014, posted on your blog by March 31, 2014.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess.  #TwelveLoaves runs so smoothly thanks to the help of the lovely Renee from Magnolia Days and this month the fabulous Alice of Hip Foodie Mom





Wednesday, January 1, 2014

No-Knead Christmas Pudding Cinnamon Rolls for #TwelveLoaves

Leftover rum-soaked Christmas pudding makes a fabulously rich filling, along with more cinnamon and brown sugar, for classic cinnamon rolls.  If you don’t have leftover pud, feel free to use just brown sugar and cinnamon.  

As expats, we’ve moved around a lot.  Most houses had company furniture and the carpets and paintings and personal effects were the only things that made them feel like ours.  We’d tell our girls, “Home is where we are all together.”  This got more challenging when both girls went off to university and their father and I continued to move.  They have bedrooms with some of their stuff in our current house in Dubai, but it would be a far stretch to say it’s home for them since they’ve never really lived there, except for holidays.  This year we are taking that mantra to extremes, celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve in a rented house, found on Airbnb.  We didn’t know if our elder daughter would have any time off from her job and, so, if Christmas was going to be spent as a family, as it must be, we would have to come to her.  We flew in from Dubai, collected younger daughter from her school housing, elder daughter from New York, and then both grandmothers flew up from Texas.  The house is full!  It's now a home.

This is a big, long prelude to telling you that we find ourselves in the small Rhode Island town of Tiverton where the only grocery store didn’t have any yeast on Christmas Eve.  And younger daughter wanted to make cinnamon rolls to bake on Christmas morning.  In desperation, I went into the small pizza place across from the grocery store and asked if they could sell me some yeast.  The kind owner did better than that!  He handed over a large chunk of fresh yeast with a hearty “Merry Christmas!”  We had traditional cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning and then I made a pan of these non-traditional ones to bring to Classic Pizza as a thank you.  It makes the perfect recipe for my first post for #TwelveLoaves, a group dedicated to bread in all its forms.  This month’s theme is Keep It Simple, and what could be easier than a yeast bread that doesn’t requiring an electric mixer or any kneading?

Credit for the traditional cinnamon roll recipe goes to Baked Bree.

Ingredients

For the dough:
2 tablespoons fresh yeast cake or 1 package (1/4oz or 7g) dried yeast
1 cup or 240g milk
1/2 cup or 115g sugar plus 1 teaspoon for proofing the yeast
1/3 cup or 75g room temperature butter plus extra for greasing pan
1 teaspoon salt
2 room temperature eggs
4 cups or 500g flour plus extra for rolling out the dough

For the filling:
About 1 cup chopped up leftover Christmas pudding, preferably one infused with rum
1/2 cup or 100g dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/4 cup or 60g room temperature butter
or
1 cup or 200g brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/3 cup or 75g room temperature butter
1 tablespoon flour

Method
Warm your milk to about 125°F or 52°C.  If you don’t have a thermometer, just warm it until it’s hot but you can still put your finger in it comfortably for 15 seconds without wanting to pull it back out and shout, “Ouch.”  Pour it into a small bowl and then crumble in the fresh yeast or sprinkle on the dried yeast.  Add one teaspoon of sugar and give the mixture a gentle stir.  Set aside.



In a large bowl, whisk your eggs, butter, sugar and salt until well combined.


Check on your milk/yeast mixture.  It should look frothy on top.  If it’s not, your yeast is dead and you need to buy more.  Let’s assume yours is frothy.

Pour it into the bowl with the egg mixture and whisk well.


Add in 1/2 cup or 125g of flour and mix well.  You will have a thick batter.


Now add in the rest of the flour 1 cup or about 250g at a time, mixing with a wooden spoon or stiff spatula.


You will have very soft dough and it may look like the flour won’t all mix in.  Never mind.  We are keeping it simple!

Just trust and cover the bowl with cling film and a towel and put it in warm place for one hour.


Meanwhile, make your filling by combining all of your ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and stirring with a fork until thoroughly mixed.



Grease your baking pan liberally with butter.  Choose one that will comfortably hold about 12 or 13 large cinnamon rolls.  Mine was 11 3/4 x 9 1/4 in or  30 x 24cm.

When the hour is up, punch down the dough and sprinkle your work surface lightly with flour.

After the first rise.

Roll the dough out in a rectangle about 12 x 18 in or 30 x 45cm.


Sprinkle on your filling of choice and make sure you get some all the way out to the edges.  Roll the dough up from the long side.




Cut the roll into 1 1/2 in or 3 3/4cm slices and put them cut side up in your prepared baking pan.



Cover the pan with cling film and a towel and put in a warm place to rise for another hour.

After the second rise.


When the hour is almost up, preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Bake your rolls in the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.



Serve plain or with cream cheese icing.



Enjoy!

Or give the whole pan to someone who saved Christmas breakfast for you and wish them a Happy New Year!

                                          Twelve Loaves

If you love bread but have found the holidays hectic, this is the #TwelveLoaves month for you!  Check out all of our recipes that Keep It Simple!


If you’d like to join us for this month’s #TwelveLoaves Keep It Simple challenge, choose a recipe that is not overly complicated, whether in technique or ingredients.

Then share your January Keep It Simple Bread (yeast or quick bread) on your blog.

If you’d like to add your bread to the collection with the Linky Tool this month, here are the rules!
1. When you post your Twelve Loaves bread recipe on your blog, make sure that you mention the Twelve Loaves challenge in your blog post; this helps us to get more members as well as share everyone's posts.
2. Post your Twelve Loaves bread on your blog by January 31, 2014.
3. It must be a bread inspired by the Twelve Loaves Keep It Simple theme, baked between January 1, 2014 and January 31, 2014.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess.  #TwelveLoaves runs so smoothly thanks to the talented and brilliant help of both Paula from Vintage Kitchen Notes and Renee from Magnolia Days.