Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Apple and Cinnamon Bread

While wandering the streets of this country I stumbled upon a cute shop which happened to have a shelf with Apple and Cinnamon Bread Flour. Of course I was instantly made to bake it. Now these poor students for some reason couldn't afford a bread baking machine so I was bound to do this by hand. At this sort of moment, obviously, you realise that the package doesn't give any instructions but "put all ingredients in a bread machine and use basic bake program". I've looked up online on how to convert a baking machine recipe to a recipe by hand, but haven't found much interesting information but "it's the same process as other breads, do it like you normally do" kind of things. So I've done exactly that. All the bread recipes I've done so far had one mixing stage followed by a 1-1,5 hour rising stage, then kneading air out, greasing pan and putting it in, followed by anothing rising stage of 0,5-1 hour and then baking. I've used the Yoghurt Bread recipe I made before as an example and this works exactly the same. So once I had all the ingredients, I started the recipe:

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Ingredients:
Bread flour (Apple and Cinnamon)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
7 grams yeast
2 tablespoons butter
300 ml water


1. Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.
2. Add the butter and rub it in the flour. Add the water bit by bit, while mixing it in with a fork. Knead the dough when you have added (almost) all water. Add more water if the dough is too dry.
3. Leave the dough in a bowl to rise for about 1-1,5 hour till the dough has doubled in size. Grease the bowl and the dough slightly before leaving it to rise and cover the bowl either with cling film or a warm wet towel.
4. When the dough has doubled in size, knead it to push trapped air out. Don't overdo this stage, but make sure you don't end up with massive holes in your bread later. Shape it in the size you want it and leave it on a greased oven tray.
5. Leave the dough for another 0,5-1 hour to rise or till doubled in size.
6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Leave the bread in the oven for 20-30 minutes and done!

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It somehow worked in my case. I might've used a bit more or less water as I didn't actually measure this out. In stead of greasing the bowl in step 3 I simple sprinkled a little bit of water over the top and covered it in cling film. I've also been a bit loose with the rising times. I left the bread under a heater, so it doubled in size fast enough. Mind I used the ingredients it said on the package, I'm guessing this might differ per bread. For instance, some might use milk in stead of water.
The bread so far is delicious, I ate a bit already before even taking pictures. Especially the bits of apple which make it taste very sweet are wonderful. Perhaps I should try something like this at home by adding white flour with dried apple pieces and cinnamon. Sounds like it can't go wrong! This bread at least didn't. I thought I hadn't left it in long enough and since Im using different materials, a different place, different oven and all that, basically I thought it was doomed to fail. Probably I haven't made a bread with a texture this good before. Perhaps I ought to blame the flour: Wessex Mill Apple and Cinnamon Bread Flour. You think this company might have a secret to it?

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