Share your Bread recipes!

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41

One of my favorite breads is a sweetbread that I am sometimes lucky to get on special occasions. Very fine.

Polish Poppy Seed Roll (Makowiec)

1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening or butter
2 (1/2 ounce) packages dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (body temp)
2 eggs, beaten
5 cups all-purpose flour
25 ounces canned poppy seed filling, if you are like my dh of solo filling (2 cans (or more)

16 servings 2 loafs Change size or US/metric
Change to: loafs US Metric

1 hour 30 mins prep
Scald milk and stir in sugar, salt and shortening or butter.
Cool to lukewarm.
Dissolve yeast in warm water.
Stir until dissolved, then stir into the lukewarm milk mixture.
Add beaten eggs and 3 cups flour.
Beat until smooth and stir in an additional 2 cups flour.
Turn dough out onto lightly floured board and knead until smooth and elastic.
Place in a greased bowl and brush top with vegtable oil.
Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from draft, until double in bulk (about 1 hour).
Punch down and turn out onto lightly floured board.
Cut into 2 rounds or 4 to make smaller loafs.
Roll out one dough into a rectangle about 12x9.
Spread 1 can of filling within 1 inch of sides.
Roll up long side into a roll.
Pinch seams tight so no filling escapes. You can use egg slightly beaten to seal. I always have poppy seed escape.
A Hint if you want it to keep the shape of the roll place it in parchment paper securing the seams of the parchment and make sure the seam of the dough is down. I prefer to bake in loaf pans as you see in the pictures I posted here.
Place on pan and let rise 1 hour until doubled.
Bake in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for 30 minutes.
Until nicely browned.
Remove parchment if using and let cool.
You can top with a powdered sugar glaze or slice and spread some sweet butter on it.
Alternative Bread Machine Method:.
Place the eggs, room temprature buttermilk, and 1/2 water in first unless you machine has wet last then reverse. Cover with 2 cups flour add butter and salt top with the rest of the flour and sugar. Make a small indent in the flour and place yeast inches (Using 21/2 teaspoons Rapid Rise Active yeast for bread machines).
Press the dough cycle and let process for a bit if it needs more water slowly add. Then follow with rolling and filling as above. I found that the last rising was 15 minutes with this method!

42

Oooh, I want a mixer that can handle 12 pounds of dough… but maybe I’d better wait until I have my dream kitchen, with two ovens.

I quite often make double batches, one after the other, in my mixer. The initial mixing and kneading doesn’t usually take more than five to ten minutes, so it all proofs at roughly the same time.

43

I neglected to mention: Whenever my mom made bread, it was in her Big Green Bowl. This is a Tupperware Fix-n-Mix, with a capacity of something like 26 cups. The dough would double up and rise over the top, sometimes spilling over. I have many large bowls, but none of them were the Big Green Bowl.

Ebay furnished one for me. I am waiting. Not at all patiently, I must add.

44

Challah recipes are like jokes–everyone has their own, better version. I have an alternate one that uses honey as the primary sweetener. We bake it every week for our Sabbath dinner. It’s really, really good.

-Rick

Adam’s Challah (All credit to our friend Adam, the world’s best philosophizing-software-engineering-Puerto-Rican-Jewish-atheist baker)

1 packet or 1 tbl active dry yeast
1 tbl sugar
1 cup warm water
1 cup bread flour

2 large eggs at room temperature
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup honey (or sugar)
1 tsp salt
about 3 additional cups bread flour

egg wash

sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or raisins (optional)

First, make the sponge. While you’re doing this, take the eggs out of the fridge so they can come up to room temperature while the sponge is rising.

The sponge:

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in any large mixing bowl, if you will be kneading by hand) dissolve the yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar in the warm water. Let stand for 5 minutes. Add the 1 cup of flour and whisk together to add a little air. Cover with plastic wrap and put aside for 1 to 2 hours (I generally put it in a cold oven so it is well-insulated and out of the way). The sponge will rise quite a bit (at least doubling in volume in the first hour).

The dough:

Add the eggs, oil, honey, and salt to the sponge and mix lightly with a fork. Add the additional 3 cups of flour and mix again with a fork so the flour is all moistened. If you use a mixer, this will prevent the dreaded “mushroom cloud of flour” when you turn it on. Attach the bowl to your mixer and, using a dough hook attachment, knead the dough first at low, then medium speed for 6-8 minutes. If you’re kneading by hand, knead for 8-10 minutes. The dough should be slightly sticky, but not too wet (it will typically not be dry enough to pull completely from the sides of the bowl, as some other doughs do). Add more flour, a tablespoon at a time, if it doesn’t seem right. When it’s completely kneaded, the dough should pass the “window-pane” test—you should be able to stretch the dough gently with both hands to form a layer thin enough to be translucent, but that doesn’t break apart.

Cover the bowl again with plastic wrap (if you’ve hand kneaded, put the dough back in a clean bowl). Let the dough rise for another hour (or two, it’s not too critical). It should about double in volume again in an hour, more if you let it rise for longer.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Turn out the dough onto a floured cutting board. You may have to scrape the sides of the bowl to get all the dough out—I told you, it’s a bit sticky! Form the dough into a loose ball and divide in two. I cut each half into three pieces, roll them with my hands into long snakes (8-12 inches long) and braid them together. Adam is a 4-piece braider. Do it however you like, but you should end up with two decent size loaves. If you’re putting in raisins, roll them in at this step.

Place the braided challahs about 3 inches apart on parchment paper on a large baking sheet. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let sit for 15-20 minutes.

Remove the plastic wrap and brush the loaves with the egg wash. Sprinkle sesame seeds and/or poppy seeds, if desired.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the loaves are a nice color and sound a bit hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes before eating. If you let them cool completely, they can be put in plastic bags and used the next day, or frozen and reheated later.

Sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite an easy recipe once you’ve made it a couple of times and is very forgiving.

45

There’s a cherry tart type thing i made, sort of based off a description in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (Elizabeth David). It was just a soft white bread dough enriched with butter, stretched out to about half an inch thick, and then covered with sour cherries. I sprinkled about a quarter cup of vanilla sugar over it, and baked it. Very tasy.

46

How sweet is that, Lissa? (Lisslar. Dammit, I hate that there are two Lissas, I get confused).

47

Lissla or Lissar.I know, it’s confusing.

Not very sweet and nicely buttery, It’s sort of a cross between a cherry foccacia and a cherry danish.

48

I made another batch of the Julia Childs bread last night. It took over 45 minutes to knead it the first time around, but it rose vey well and it’s nice and light. I had thought about doubling it, but my bread bowl hasn’t arrived.

49

To those of you who have told me to buy the flour at Costco: I pooh-poohed this suggestion. I mean, at home (Alberta, Canada) it’s common to be able to buy a 20 pound bag of flour in the grocery store. The biggest bag here is FIVE POUNDS. Great, if I want to make four loaves of bread. Not so great if I want to make ten at a time. Sheesh.

50

Ginger - However to you manage to eat 10 loaves of bread? How many are you feeding? I thought there were three in your family. Do you have a way to store them?

StG

51

We have two boys, one is twelve and one is nearly two. We’ve got a chest freezer. I slice the loaves and put them into big Ziploc bags and freeze them.

52

Ginger - Ive never frozen bread. Does it taste the same when it thaws? Does it have the same texture?

StG

53

The Julia Childs recipe is just fine, I don’t notice a difference. So is my mom’s bread, which I’ll be making today since my bowl finally came in the mail yesterday.

PS: I found a 10-pound bag at Superfresh, but it’s all-purpose rather than bread flour. That’s what Mom always uses, so that’ll work for me.

54

I have a question for those of you that freeze dough: Just what am I doing wrong? When I’ve made the bread, I don’t let it rise but put it directly into freezer bags (in loaf shape) and right into the freezer. When I take them out and let them thaw and rise, they aren’t really rising. They will rise up to the top of the loaf pan, and will not dome at all.

Help?

55

Let rise, then freeze. You’re killing the activated yeast by freezing it after it is wetted. (I haven’t had particularly good luck freezing any rising dough, though pizza crust comes out okay as long as you don’t mind it thin.)

Stranger

56

What the Stranger said - let it rise first, then freeze it. It always takes a lot longer to rise after having been frozen (probably because it’s still cold), but it does rise. I tried your advice about freezing the loaves, and they do come out wonderfully.

StG

57

Any breadmakers here in New York City? NYC apartments are notoriously dry; coupled with the cool weather, I often have to let my dough rise for two hours or more before getting any sort of significant rise. I can sometimes get a little ‘kick’ from the oven, but my breads definitely don’t rise as much as I’d like them to. I’ve tried various tricks (putting the dough in the oven, with a pan of just-boiled water underneath, etc), but nothing really seems to work. Taste-wise, the breads come out great, but I’m still wondering how to get a bit more rise out of the bread.

Now, I’ve heard that small ‘proof boxes’ for home use exist - but some extensive Internet searching turned up zilch. Anyone heard of such a thing, and if so, where could I buy one? Otherwise, anyone have any tips for breadbaking in dry, cool conditions?

58

I’m making something based off a recipe in Home Baking, which covers a huge number of different culture’s bread and pastry making- chocolate bread batons. You make a bread dough, let it rise, flatten it out, and cover it with chopped bittersweet chocolate. Rool it up, pat it flat, and cut 1 inch strips crosswise. Twist and stretch them, and lay them fairly close together on a baking sheet. Let them rise again, and bake them.

I’m doing it with an egg and butter dough. I’ll let you know how it goes.

How do you achieve big French bread holes? Longer proofing, softer flour?

59

Both risings? Mom’s recipe takes two, both about an hour and a half. Rise, then separate into loaves and rise again. Shall I do that and then freeze?

60

In my recent experience, you get an awesome, chewy French bread texture from freezing dough before rising it. :rolleyes: So it’s lovely, but it’s NOT WHAT I WANTED.