Bread Baking: Braided Loaf

 Our bread recipe this month is for a braided loaf. Braided loaf is slightly buttery white bread with a hint of sweetness on top. Melt in your mouth delicious.

Braided Loaf:
1 cup (250mL) warm milk (about body temperature)
1/2 cube (20g) live yeast (or 1 1/2 tsp dry yeast)
1/3 cup (75g) sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp sea salt (or 1 tsp table salt)
4 cups (500g) white flour
1/4 cup (60g) butter
2 tbsp coarse sugar

Add the warm milk to a mixing bowl. Crumble in the yeast and add the sugar. Stir with a spoon until smooth. Beat the egg and add half of it to the bowl. Keep the other half in the fridge until needed.
Combine the salt with the flour.
Add the flour to the milk mixture.
Stir with a spoon until you can't anymore.
Then turn it out on a clean surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth.

Add the butter one tablespoon at a time and knead it into the dough. Get the dough to bread dough consistency after each addition. It can take some kneading before the butter incorporates.
After all the butter has been incorporated, it should look something like this.
Place the dough into a bowl (I prefer to put it back into the bowl I mixed it up in), cover with a clean towel and allow to rise for an hour.
The dough should have at least doubled. It's a warm day when I'm making this, so mine rose quite a bit.
Split the dough into three give or take even balls of dough.

Then roll each ball into snakes about the same length.

Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
Pinch one end together. It shouldn't have trouble sticking together.
Then, take the outer most strand and place it in the center of the other two.
Then do the same thing on the other side.
Continue this pattern until the whole loaf has been braided.

Pinch the ends together as well.

Cover with a clean towel and allow to rise another 30-40 minutes.
It should rise nicely.
Brush the dough with the rest of the egg we refrigerated.
Sprinkle the top with coarse sugar.
Bake in a 350°F or 180°C oven for 25 minutes. Feel free to cover with tin foil the last ten minutes if the loaf is getting too browned.

This loaf turned out perfect.

I love how you can see where the dough raised while baking.
The inside is soft and vaguely sweet with a lovely slightly buttery texture.

The crust has a sweet crunch to it. Definitely worth making.

Watch us make this gorgeous bread on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/ozJd5ThTPFU
Schaut zu wie wir dieses schone Brot auf YouTube machen hier:

https://youtu.be/gAuR4bI_3WY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dress up a Sheet Cake: White on White Wedding Cake

Image
I've been thinking about all the things that have been cancelled because of Covid19 and I think the saddest is the weddings. So much expense, planning, excitement... gone. Now, I know most of you who had to reschedule your wedding will eventually have them. But I don't know how much money you would have lost because of the cancellation of your first planned wedding. So, I thought some of you might need to save money on your future wedding. So, I thought I would share with you a way you could make your own wedding cake out of a regular, plain sheet cake. I started out with a frosted sheet cake. You can frost it yourself or buy it frosted.  Then I thought I would use all of these tips, but I only ended up using the small round tip and the medium star tip. The petal tip and leaf tip weren't needed for this design.  Using a skewer, I traced two interlocking hearts as well as the monograms of the couple. In this case, T and C.  Then I traced over the letters with ...
Read more

Dairy-Free Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Image
After going through the effort of making my vanilla cake gluten free, dairy free and soy free, I needed a dairy free frosting. American buttercream is easy to make dairy free. But the family I'm making the cake for prefers Swiss meringue buttercream. I googled how to make dairy free Swiss meringue buttercream, and basically every blog I found said that it wasn't possible. They all said you have to use butter. I am not willing to accept that answer. So, I decided to experiment a bit until I found a ratio that works. So, first off, here's the recipe: Dairy-free Swiss Meringue Buttercream: 7 egg whites 2 cups sugar 1 1/2 cups dairy-free margarine 1/2 cup shortening pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tbsp vanilla sugar 1 tsp butter vanilla flavoring (optional, if omitting, double amount of vanilla flavoring)  I'm using a stand mixer today with a whisk attachment.  I first whisk the egg whites, sugar and vanilla sugar, if using vanilla sugar. Then I h...
Read more

Tutorial: How to Make a 2D Simba Cake Topper

Image
 I tried to make this character 3D. I really did. But it was so terrible I just couldn't bring myself to use it.  I eventually decided to try making a 2D figure. Then I could use a template. So first, here's the image I used: First, I cut out a yellow circle to use as a background. Then I added some brown to yellow fondant and rolled it out. I cut around the template and cut out the paws. Then I added the paws cut out of white fondant. Then I used a pointed scuplting tool to press the lines of the template into the fondant. Then, removing the template, I deepened the lines to make them more visible. I added a white muzzle and a pink nose. I painted some brown food coloring mixed with alcohol into the shadows of the face and ears. Finally, I added some undiluted black food coloring to the ears, eyebrows and eyes. How adorable is this? And so clearly Simba. This is a great method for those who can't accurately draw the characters themselves. In other words, perfect for me. Wa...
Read more