Portuguese Sweet Bread

This week I decided to make some Portuguese Sweet Bread.  It is sometimes called Hawaiian bread due to its popularity there.  The recipe for this once again came from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. 

This bread is somewhat rich from the butter and egg.  It is also a little citrusy.  The bread is good on its own, but makes for some outstanding French toast.

This is the mise en place for the sponge for the bread.

First, the dry ingredients go into a bowl and mixed.

The sponge gets water added and mixed together.

The sponge sits for an hour or two until its extremely bubbly and ready to collapse onto itself.

This is the mise en place for the dough, minus salt.

The butter, sugar, and dry milk are measured and ready for mixing.

Then they all get creamed together.

The eggs and extracts get mixed into the butter until smooth.

Then the bread flour gets kneaded in for about 10 minutes.  It should pass the windowpane test, when the dough can be spread out so that you can see through it.

The dough shaped into a ball and set in an oiled bowl.  It then has to ferment for about two hours.

At that point, the dough get “punched down” and reshaped into a ball.  It then gets placed into an oiled pie tin and left on the counter to proof for another two hours.

Here is a shot of the dough, with the skin pulled tight.

After the proofing period, it gets brushed with egg wash and baking in the oven for 50 minutes.

After baking, the crust gets a deep mahogany brown.

And here is a final shot of the bread in slices.

Let Them Eat Cake - Brioche

“Let them eat cake”, the phrase that was so famously said by Marie Antoinette.  Except, she didn’t.  The phrase was mistranslated and should have read “let them eat brioche.”  Of course, contemporary thinking suggests that she didn’t even utter this either.

Brioche is a rich buttery and egg laden bread.  The crust of the bread is very flaky, while the crumb of the bread is extremely tender.

Again, for this recipe I’ve turned to my favorite bread book: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.  In the book he presents three different recipes with varying amounts of butter.  I’ve always chosen to make the Rich Man’s Brioche, because as I see it, if you are going to make Brioche, you should make it the richest possible.  To that end, I’ve made some substitutions to the recipe presented in the book.  I’ve replaced the normal butter with my favorite butter: Plugra.  Also, I’ve replaced the whole milk with buttermilk.  The recipe provided in the book is excellent, but I think these two substitutions provide a better richer taste.

Once again, here is my mise en place. 

Getting ready to make the sponge, flour and yeast get mixed.

I heated the buttermilk in the microwave, but turns out I got it too hot, so here it is in a water bath, cooling down.  It needs to be between 90 & 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sponge gets mixed and then set aside for 20 minutes, as the other ingredients get prepared.

Here’s the remaining dry ingredients: flour, sugar, and some salt.

Five eggs get cracked and then lightly whisked.

Here’s the pound of Plugra cut into manageable slices.

After 20 minute, the sponge is bubbly and ready for mixing.

The eggs get mixed into the sponge.

Then the remaining dry ingredients are mixed in.  This gets mixed for a few minutes to help the gluten develop before the butter gets mixed in.

Here’s the first round of butter getting mixed in.  The butter needs to be mixed in bit by bit.

Here’s the dough after all the butter has been mixed in.

The dough gets placed on a oiled parchment paper, then covered with plastic wrap and placed in the refrigerator overnight.

Here’s a close up view of what the dough should look like before going into the fridge.

And here we’ve skipped a few steps.  The dough came out of the fridge, was shaped into a ball, then into a brioche à tête.  The recipe makes two loaves, but since I only have one brioche pan, the other loaf got shaped into a normal bread loaf.

Here’s the brioche after baking.  The crust should be shinier and flakier but I forgot to give the loaf an egg wash prior to baking.

Here’s a close up of the crust of the finished brioche.

Sticky Buns

I grew up on sticky buns. My mother would make them for breakfast for special occasions. We would often have them on Christmas morning and other times throughout the year.

Sticky buns are essentially the same thing as cinnamon rolls, but rather than coating them with icing, they have a caramel topping.

This recipe is again out of the The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. The bread dough here is actually quite similar to the dough from the King Cake, only with less lemon and no nutmeg.

Here’s the mise en place. I’ve chosen to go with good quality butter (Plugra) here since it’ll be used not only in the dough, but the caramel topping. Since the caramel’s flavor comes pretty heavily from the butter, the best butter is going to give it the best taste.

Starting the dough by creaming the butter and sugar together.

The creamed butter-sugar mixture. A good base for enriched dough and cookies.

Just a single pristine egg, whisked up before going into the dough.

In goes the flour, buttermilk, whisked egg, and other ingredients.

Then, just bringing the dough together with the beater attachment.

Afterwards, kneading the dough with the dough hook. Ready to be shaped.

Shape the dough into a boule and into an oiled bowl to rise.

While the dough rises, time to make the caramel. More butter and sugar is creamed together along with some vanilla.

The caramel mixture. It doesn’t look much like caramel, because it hasn’t been cooked. It will be cooked and turn to caramel when the sticky buns cook.

Some cinnamon sugar for the filling of the sticky buns.

The dough has risen and is ready to be rolled out.

One way to tell if the dough is ready is to press your finger into the dough and if indentation stays, then it’s probably ready. If the dough rebounds then it definitely needs more time to rise.

The dough gets rolled out into a rough rectangle.

Some melted butter is brushed on then the cinnamon sugar is sprinkled onto the dough.

A close look at the cinnamon-sugar.

The dough gets carefully rolled up along the long edge. The dough stretches a little bit when you do this as you can see since I ran out of space on my board.

The caramel mixture goes into the bottom of the baking dish.

Another close up of the caramel mixture.

The rolls get cut out. You can use a really sharp bread knife, or use some thread and wrap it around the roll and pull and it will make a nice clean cut for you.

A close up of a cut roll.

The rolls get placed into the baking dish. They then set to rise until they double or push into each other, mostly filling the dish.

A close up of the rolls in the dish.

Here’s the sticky buns mid-way through the baking cycle. You can see how they’ve risen and are touching each other and nearly filing the baking dish.

Once they are out of the oven, they cool for a little while before being flipped out. The bottom side of the baking dish where the caramel mixture was becomes the top of the finished sticky bun.

One of the good things about them, is there is something for everyone here. For those that like a little crust on their sticky bun, the outer edges and corners are for them. The interior sticky buns are softer and were always my favorite growing up.