Tag: baking

writ­ten 2/18/2024, updat­ed 9/25/2024

What

Sweet bread with dried fruit and nuts, made veg­an, with­out eggs or cow’s milk

Ingredients

Main (amounts also in instruc­tions)

Sup­plies: Elec­tric Stand Mix­ture, Mea­sur­ing Cups, Spat­u­la, Plas­tic Wrap, Non-Stick Spray, Loaf Pan/Baking Sheet/other Bread Pans, Cool­ing Rack, Bread Bags

Option­al: Hon­ey, Nuts, Seeds, Cin­na­mon, Red Bean Paste, Fruit, Corn Syrup

Time

Prep (1.5 hours total) + Rest­ing (2 hours total) + Bak­ing (40 min­utes) = ~4.1 hours Total

Serving Size

2 bread loaves

Making

• Remove veg­an but­ter from refrig­er­a­tor to warm to room tem­per­a­ture

Yeast (~15 min­utes)

• Heat Milk (1½ Cup) to about 105–115F
• Pour into stand mix­er bowl
• Dis­solve Sug­ar (2 tsp) and option­al­ly, Hon­ey
• Add Active Dry Yeast (2¼ tsp or 1 enve­lope)
• Light­ly stir
• Cov­er and let bloom for about 5–10 min­utes (until it foams and smells like yeast)

Flour Paste (aka Tangzhong method) — adds a creamy tex­ture

• In a mix­ing bowl, com­bine Flour (½ Cup) and Corn­starch (1Tbsp) with Boil­ing Water (add ~½ Cup first then more if need­ed. I used between ²⁄₃ Cup and ³⁄₄)
• Whip vig­or­ous­ly until smooth. It will be sticky (I tried a whisk first but it was either too small or I did­n’t add enough water and it got all stuck inside. Switched to a spoon for bet­ter results)

Option­al: Fruits and Nuts *see Notes sec­tion

• Soak dried fruit in warm water
• Toast wal­nuts

Dough (~15 min­utes)

• By now the Yeast should have bloomed quite well
• Add the Flour Paste and dis­solve with a pad­dle attach­ment at Stir speed
• Dis­solve Sug­ar (½ Cup for sweet bread, less for less sweet)
• Add Salt (1Tbsp)
• Incre­men­tal­ly add Flour (~4 Cups total) until it starts turn­ing into dough
• Switch to the dough hook, increase speed to lev­el 2, and fin­ish adding the flour (scrape down the sides every so often)
• When it is well com­bined, but still sticky cov­er and let rest for about 10 min­utes (good time to wash dish­es)

Dough Part 2 (5–10 min­utes)

• Cut Veg­an But­ter (¼ Cup) into lit­tle cubes
• Add to mix­ing bowl
• Run at speed lev­el 2 until well-mixed
• Dough should come nice­ly off the sides of the bowl. Add small amounts of flour as need­ed
• When it is smooth and tacky, cov­er

Rise #1 (1 hour)

• Cov­er and place in a warm place for an hour until it has dou­bled or tripled in size
• If using fruits and/or nuts, drain the fruits and prep nuts/seeds if you haven’t
• Pre­pare any oth­er fill­ings or addi­tives

Dough Part 3

• Either turn stand mix­er on to speed lev­el 2 (for 2 min­utes) to remove air, or sim­ply punch it down
• Pre­pare loaf pans by plac­ing parch­ment paper
• Light­ly flour work­ing sur­face
• Turn out dough and decide how you want divide
• If adding fruits/nuts/paste, flat­ten the dough and add, then fold togeth­er, and roll. When sat­is­fied, place seam side down onto pans
• If no addi­tions, shape and roll into prop­er shape for pans, remem­ber­ing that bread will rise again and expand when bak­ing

Rest #2 (1 hour)

• Spray the top of the dough with cook­ing spray to pre­vent plas­tic wrap from stick­ing to the dough lat­er
• Cov­er and place in a warm loca­tion until dou­bled in size

Bake Prep (5 min­utes)

• Your pref­er­ence of wash (Option­al)
• Can be Syrup Wash (1:1 Corn Syrup to Water) or any com­bi­na­tion or ratio of the syrup to water. Can add hon­ey to the ratio
• I used 2:1 Corn Syrup to Hon­ey, and added a dash of water
• If adding top­pings to bread, add it
• Cut vent lines in the top of the loaves
• Here, I messed up because I did­n’t grease the plas­tic or the dough, so I had to re-shape the loaves and let them rise a lit­tle again

Bake (40 min­utes)

• Pre­heat oven to 350 F
• Uncov­er dough and brush tops with Wash
• Bake for about 40 min­utes until gold­en
• Brush with Wash again after remov­ing from oven
• Let cool before slic­ing!
• Impor­tant: Make sure to remove any parch­ment paper from under the bread! Oth­er­wise, the bot­tom will remain wet while the rest cools

Notes

• Dried fruit: (like raisins, cran­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, etc.) can be fold­ed into the dough, but can soak up mois­ture. To coun­ter­act that, soak them in hot water
• Nuts: can be chopped and fold­ed in raw but can also be toast­ed to improve fla­vor. Hard­er nuts should be soaked in warm water oth­er­wise they can be too hard after bak­ing
• Seeds: If top­ping with seeds, do not toast before­hand as they will burn dur­ing bak­ing
• Paste: Same game­plan as the oth­er add-ins. Pre­pare to your taste, then spread it like you’re but­ter­ing toast, then roll, spread, roll, etc until you’re hap­py

9/22/24: Made both Sweet Red Bean Paste and Dried Fruit bread. Red bean paste from a can. Did filled buns, 1 twist, and 1 loaf of that. Just 1 loaf of dried fruit bread, using dried apri­cots, cher­ries, and cran­ber­ries. Should have cut the apri­cots even small­er (did quar­ters). For the loaf, added some orange extract to the red bean. Might have added too much, but it does give it an inter­est­ing taste. Did not use a glaze and they’re a tad over­done.