Bread

This rich and sweet bread is baked for Easter in Croatia. Funny enough I've never eaten this bread before, even though I'm half Croatian. I guess it's because I've never been in Croatia during Easter. There are lots of variations on this bread and I made my own recipe mixing and matching from several recipes and then preparing it the way I thought it should. All the recipes I looked at were in Croatian and my Croatian isn't that good, especially not when technical baking stuff is described ;)
What I did was just mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Mix the liquid ingredients in another bowl and add this to the dry mix. Worked for me :) I guess 'real' yeast bakers would have done it differently and not melt the butter. But hey, I'm not a 'real' yeast baker :D
I let the dough proof in the fridge overnight (about 14 hours). I cut the dough in four and shaped the pieces into balls. They looked like balls but by the time they did a second proofing the shape they had after I cut them reappeared. So in the end they weren't as round as I liked.
The dough itself already smelled like heaven, during baking it smelled even better...YUM! And the taste was very, Very, VERY good! More of a cake than a bread. It took me 36 years to finally eat this typical Croatian Easter bread but I know I will be making it every year for Easter from now on. Beats the traditional Easter stollen we have in the Netherlands (not that I've ever made that myself).
My mum and dad will be here on Monday, see how my father reacts to the sirnica...

Oh yes I had some news too :) As of the beginning of July we will be relocating to Vienna, Austria for a period of 4 years. We're all looking forward to that! So we have some busy times ahead. First son number 3 will be born (my due date is May 21st) and soon after we'll leave for Vienna. We'll be living in an appartment hotel until we find something more permanent so unfortunately I won't be doing a lot of baking as my stuff will still be in boxes waiting for us to move to a real house. So maybe I should post a lot about fruit salads ;)
My eldest son R who is nearly 4 is really exited about the whole thing. Besides the move it will also be the first time he will be going to school. I don't know who is more excited about him going to school, him or me ;)

Oh yes, Happy Easter to those celebrating!



Sirnica (Croatian Easter bread)

makes 4

1 kg (2 lb 3 ½ oz) bread flour
250 g (9 oz) cane sugar
1 ts salt
14 g (½ oz) instant yeast (50 g / 1 ¾ oz fresh yeast)
250 g (9 oz) butter, melted and cooled (but still liquid)
2 tbs rakija (or grappa)
2 tbs dark rum
1 tbs rosewater
1 tbs vanilla extract
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon
8 egg yolks
400 ml (13 ½ fl oz) milk, room temperature

1 egg, mixed with a little water
coarse (cane) sugar

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and instant yeast in a large bowl.
Mix the butter, rakija, rum, rosewater, vanilla extract, orange and lemon zest, egg yolks and milk together.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until mixed as good as you can. Continue mixing by hand until all the flour is incorporated. Take the dough out of the bowl onto a floured surface. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding flour as needed so that the dough won't be very sticky.
Lightly oil a large bowl (large enough to hold the dough and have room for it to double in size). Put the dough in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to proof in the fridge overnight.
Take the dough out of the bowl and press on it to release part of the gas. Cut the dough in 4 equal parts. Shape each part into a ball. Place the balls on a large baking tray or sheet that is covered with baking paper. Put the baking tray in a large plastic bag and allow the shaped dough to proof for another 2 ½ hours at room temperature or until grown 1 ½ times in size.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
Cut the top of the dough balls with a cross using a very sharp serrated knife. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle some coarse sugar on top.
Bake for about 45-50 minutes.
Allow the breads to cool on wire racks.

This post is submitted to Yeastspotting hosted by Zorra.

Well pretty much the moment I posted my last entry the weather turned :( The temperatures have dropped about 10°C and it's cold and windy. Luckily there is still some sun here and there so I'm not complaining. Both sons have been under the weather for the last week so I haven't been in my kitchen as much as I wanted too yet. But I'll have to because I have a lot to do: baking for my friend who just had a baby girl, my youngest son's 1st birthday, SHF, this month's Daring Bakers challenge to name just a few. So much to do and so little time...sigh...
Today's recipe is one that has been sitting in my archives for a pretty long time. I made this raisin bread when I had a high tea with some of my dearest friends. Besides all the fat and sweet treats I wanted to serve something that was a bit more plain to even things out. So this tea brack was perfect for that. It was good loaf but I'm not too fond of raisins so I'm sure I won't make this exact recipe again. Also I expected to taste some of the fennel tea in which I steeped the raisins but despite being a super taster I could only barely taste it. Good thing about this loaf is that it's low-fat, the only tiny bit of fat comes from the egg yolk.
It improves with keeping (not indefinitely of course but it's better after a couple of days).
I'm submitting this raisin bread to Waiter There's Something In My...Dried Fruits and Nuts. This month it's hosted by Andrew of Spittoon Extra.



Fennel tea soaked raisin bread (adapted from Traditional Farmhouse Teas by Janice Murfitt)

makes 1 loaf

300 ml (1 ¼ cups) warm herbal tea (I used fennel)
500 g (1 lb / 3 cups) raisins
250 g (8 oz / 1 ⅓ cups) light soft brown sugar
3 tbs orange marmalade
1 egg, beaten
500 g (1 lb /4 cups) self-raising flour (or regular flour mixed with 3% of its weight in baking powder)
1 tsp apple spices

Mix the tea, raisins, sugar and marmalade. Stir until well blended. Cover and allow to soak overnight.
Preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F). Grease a 1 kg (2 lb) loaf pan. Line the base and sides with baking paper.
Add the egg to the fruit mixture and sift in the flour and spices. Mix together with a wooden spoon until well blended. Place the mixture in the baking pan.
Bake for about 1 ¼ hours. The fruit bread should spring back and feel firm when pressed with your fingers.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan before turning it out. Remove the baking paper and allow to cool on a wire rack.

My Adopt-a-Blogger adoptee Nikki of Crazy Delicious has launched her very own food blogging event called Master Baker. Each month she decides on an ingredient and you can join the event by baking something with this ingredient. The ingredient in the very first edition of Master Baker is cinnamon. To enter Nikki's event I tried recreating a traditional Frisian sugar bread called Fryske sûkerbôle in Frisian or Fries suikerbrood in Dutch. It's a delicious bread with cinnamon and sugar cubes. The idea is to allow the cubes to liquidify in the bread, it's best to wait a few days to allow this to happen. That way you have specks of wet, very sweet bread....my favourite parts in the bread :)
Maybe you noticed that I wrote that I tried to recreate this bread. Taste wise it turned out very well but the crumb was less moist and smaller than the 'real' thing. So I have to experiment a little more to really recreate it. Unfortunately I didn't have time to do this before Nikki's deadline.
Also the upper part of the crust turned sort of dark brown/blackish 10 minutes before the end of the baking time. My guess is that the fact the recipe told me to sprinkle the crust with sugar before baking was the problem. Next time I'd skip that step.
The sugar cubes mentioned in the recipe are not crushed but I crushed half of them. Would crush all of them next time because the bread had very big holes because of the cubes. Adjusted the recipe below with these two things btw.
Even though it wasn't an exact copy it does taste delicious! It's best eaten with a generous spread of butter...real butter that is :)

Frisian sugar bread (adapted from this site)

7 g (¼ oz) dry yeast
325 ml milk, tepid
500 g (17 ½ oz) flour
1 ts salt
2 ts cinnamon
30 g (1 oz) butter, melted
150 g (5 ¼ oz) sugar cubes, coarsely crushed

Dissolve the yeast in the milk. Meanwhile mix together flour, salt and cinnamon. Add the melted butter and milk to the flour mixture and mix until combined. Knead the dough for 10-15 minutes until smooth and elastic.
Put the dough in a mixing bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a wet kitchen towel. Let the dough double in volume in about 1-2 hours.
Knead the dough briefly on a lightly floured surface and roll into a square of about 25 cm x 40 cm (10 in x 16 in). Scatter the crushed sugar cubes onto the dough. Press the sugar in the dough. Fold in the dough in three. Press the dough. Roll it up tightly and put it seam down in a buttered bread pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Allow the dough to rise ½ hour or until doubled. Preheat the oven to 220°C (430°F). Bake the bread for 30-40 minutes. Brush with water just after taking it out of the oven. Take the bread out of the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Another month, another Daring Baker challenge, Julia Child's French bread to be precise. A recipe that was chosen by Breadchick Mary of The Sour Dough and Sara of I Like To Cook.



About a week and a half before the challenge I thought it might be wise to print out the recipe so I could get familiar with it. To my surprise there were 11 pages of it! It sort of made me laugh on the one hand but on the other hand it sort of scared me too. I had to actually plan reading it because there was so much of it. All these pages for a bread that only consists of water, flour, salt and yeast ;)
I was glad that there were so many pages because everything is explained so well. This is especially important to someone who doesn't do bread (that much). Everything that you are supposed to feel or see is explained and also the thinks that you could possibly see. A very good recipe indeed, though time-consuming to read.
Onto the making of the French bread. One of my aversion of making bread (without a bread machine that is) is that it's difficult to plan, especially with two small children that need attention during the day and part of the evening. When yeast is involved you never really know for sure when you can expect the dough to have risen to double or in this case to tripled-and-a-halve! The indicative time was 3 - 5 hours for the first rise, than 1 ½ – 2 hours for the second and finally 1 ½ – 2 hours for the third. I wasn't sure if I was able to do everything in one day so I opted for a first rise in the fridge. I made the dough around 22:30 and went to sleep. The next day I had to leave home at 8:00 to go to class so I figured if the dough had risen to the required volume of 10 ½ cups I would do the next step (to deflate and to let is rise again). If not, than the dough would just have to wait till I got home at about 13:00. I called home at about 12:00 to ask my dad (my parents baby-sit the kids 2 days a week) how the dough was doing. Turned out it still didn't reach the 10 ½ cups so I asked him to take it out of the fridge to rise quicker. When I got home at 13:00 it was still not high enough and I had to wait until 15:30 before I could form the 1 big boule I was going to make (no time to form a lot of breads). I thought that I could bake it afterwards but even after reading the recipe twice before I started I didn't remember there was even a third rise! And one that was to take 1 ½ to 2 hours...so at that moment I decided to let it rise in the fridge again and to bake it the next day.
The next day the dough had doubled but it had to triple. I took it out of the fridge around 8:00 and at 10:00 I was ready for the final steps before baking. The flipping of the dough onto a baking sheet (which I used instead of card board or ply wood) went very well. It was a bit difficult to get the towel off because it stuck to the dough at a few small places. But in the end I managed to do so nearly without damage to the surface. The only problem I encountered during the whole process was that I wasn't able to transfer the dough to its designated baking sheet. So I baked it on the intermediate baking sheet that was sprinkled with corn flour. This baking sheet was a bit small, if the boule was to expand more than 1 cm (½ in) to each side it would go over the edge of the bakins sheet. So I placed the baking sheet onto a bigger one and baked the bread. I did the brushing with water thing and jumped under the shower. When I returned to the kitchen the boule had baked for 24 minutes and looked much darker than I expected. Had to be patient for 3 hours before I could finally taste it. So in the end from making the dough till actually tasting the bread it took 39 hours! But the amount of time you actually had to do something was not a lot. Because of the ultra long time it took me to finish it, the taste had time to develop ;)



It didn't turn out looking like it should have but for me it felt like sort of close enough. Need some work on my slashing action but at least the crust was nice and shiny. I was not as crusty as I expected, I think that was because the bottom of the boule barely browned at all and therefor didn't seal the bread with a good crust. A baking stone would be an asset I think here.
It tasted very good! The inside was soft yet chewy (in a good way) and nice and moist. It reminded me more of Turkish pide than of French bread though.
The only more or less downside of the recipe is that in my opinion the bread was a bit too salty, and this is coming from a person who likes her savouries to be pretty salty! Next time I'd add less salt. Not that I think that there will be a next time with of all the planning involved ;)
And finally a note, I think that my dough was a little bit too moist because the boule couldn't hold its shape. So instead of rounded edges I ended up with very sharp edges.

Check out how Sara and Mary themselves did. You'll also find the recipe there.
And to see how all of the 'millions' of Daring Bakers did, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

When I say Ivonne's entry to HHDD #17 I remembered that I forgot something...not making my entry for HHDD but posting about it. So here in the nick of time is at least a picture of my entry. Will update this post tomorrow evening...

Ok, this is tomorrow night....about the pizza. I like sweet so a sweet pizza it had to be for this month's HHDD hosted by 80 Breakfasts. The crust is made of brioche dough instead of regular pizza dough. Making brioche has been on my to-do list for a while so this seemed like a good opportunity to make it. The most important thing I learned when making the dough for the brioche was that I don't only want (and deserve :) a KitchenAid, I need one too! Up till last week I was very happy with my Braun Multisystem K1000 food processor most of the times. But making brioche dough didn't go that well. The mixing bowl has a lid which traps in the heat and heat is generated by kneading the dough. I had the same problem when I made Swiss meringue a while back. I have to admit that the dough had a pretty high temperature when I started kneading it in the machine but it kept on getting hotter and hotter. I had to stop kneading because I was afraid to kill the yeast (turned out I was time). Because of the heat the butter in the dough was very soft so the dough was very hard to handle. After the second rise in the fridge it was much more manageble luckily. But as I said, it would probably have been even better with a KitchenAid ;) so now I'm hoping that my Braun will break down and I can buy a KitchenAid without feeling guilty.
The brioche was very most and buttery. The strawberry jam and white chocolate were perfect toppings for it. I would say this is a perfect Sunday morning breakfast type of pizza. You could even bake it just before breakfast and spread everything on while it was still hot. I didn't have time to do that so I composed my pizza in parts. Baked and froze the brioche crust and spread the jam and grated the chocolate when I had an opportunity to shoot some pictures of it.
The brioche recipe is from Sherry Yard's book, the Secrets of Baking which has become a real favorite. It contains lots of what Sherry calls 'master recipes' the basic recipe for a whole group of recipes that are derived from this recipe. Medium fat brioche eg is the master recipe and others that are derived from this recipe are eg challah, panettone and coffee cake. What I especially like about the book is the fact that she explains a lot about the processes that occur in baking. I haven't made a lot from it yet so I can't tell if all the recipes are good but the ones I made were. The only down side for me is that it's not in metric but maybe that's just because I'm a metric girl ;)



Brioche pizza with strawberry jam and white chocolate (from The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard)

makes one 'pizza crust'

for the sponge
1 1/4 ts active dry yeast
1/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
2 tbs sugar
1/4 cup bread flour or all-purpose flour

for the dough
1 1/2 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour
1/2 + 1/8 ts salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 pound butter, softened but still cool

Topping
6 tbs strawberry jam
1/2 tbs water
a few squares of white chocolate, grated

Sponge
Combine the yeast and milk in the bowl of a standing mixer (ideally a KitchenAid ;) fitted with a paddle attachement and whisk until the yeast is dissolved. Stir in the sugar and flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 to 45 minutes in a warm environment or until bubbles will form.

Dough
Add the flour and salt to the sponge, then add the eggs. Mix on low speed for 2 minutes or until the eggs are absorbed. Increase the speed to medium and knead the dough for 5 minutes. The dough will start to slap around and pull away from the sides. Then it will form a ball on the paddle. Finally it will relax and reach back out to the sides of the bowl. At this point, it will be shiny and satiny looking.
On medium speed, add the butter, 2 tbs at the time. Knead until the dough is shiny and smooth, about 5 minutes.
Place the dough in an oiled bowl and turn it over so that the top is also coated with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 2 hours.
Deflate the dough by pressing down on it, folding one half into the other. Fold two or three times. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight or at least 4 hours.
Turn out the dough on a lightlyfloured surface and shape it into a circle. Dust the dough lightly with flour. Roll out the dough till 1 1/2 cm (1/2 in) thickness. Transfer to a baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap. Let it rise at room temperature until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F). Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown and an internal temperature of at least 180 F. Let it cool on the baking sheet.
Mix the jam with the water and microwave for about 30 seconds. Stir until smooth. Spread over the brioche. Sprinkle grated white chocolate over the jam.