bread

Almond Croissant Milk Bread

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This is the fanciest and tastiest bread I’ve made that I am looking forward to baking again. Medium effort, high reward baking. I started the milk dough after dinner one night, put the dough in the fridge overnight after the first rise, and we were eating the delicious bread for lunch the next day. It also smells wonderful during and after baking. I don’t think there is a big resemblance to croissants, but it’s more of a coffee cake bread. The almond flavor comes from sliced almonds, almond flour, and almond extract. No almond paste or marzipan. Only two eggs are needed, and one stick of butter. Swedish pearl sugar is listed in the recipe, which I’ve never bought, but granulated sugar or turbinado sugar are good substitutes. There is some nonfat dry milk powder in the recipe, but The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Breads states that the milk powder is entirely optional. It does take quite a while to mix the soft bread dough in a stand mixer, but the almond filling is easy to make.

This bread also freezes well, and tastes great plain, with butter, jam, or other toppings. I only wish it made two loaves! Isn’t it gorgeous?

The recipes, with excellent step-by-step instructions are freely available on the King Arthur Baking website, here.

Enjoy!

Brenda

Big Book of Bread

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Big Book of Bread: 125+ Recipes for Every Baker by King Arthur Baking Company

Flour Tortillas
Sky-High Nanterre Brioche
Mexican Chocolate Swirl Bread
Molasses-Oat Bread

This cookbook has recipes for all sorts of breads: flat breads, sourdough, sandwich loaves, round artisan breads, and fancy enriched breads. It’s suitable for bread bakers at all skill levels and has recipes from many countries. All four recipes I tried turned out very well. First I made flour tortillas, cooked in a skillet, using coconut oil as the suggested substitution for lard. Next I baked molasses-oat bread, and liked the technique given to add oats to the top of the loaf. Then I baked Mexican chocolate swirl bread, which is a lightly enriched dough. I omitted the optional chipotle powder in the filling, which included cocoa powder, cinnamon, and sugar. This was even more delicious than cinnamon and/or raisin swirl bread, and made excellent toast. Finally I made the brioche dough, and used my new Pullman loaf pan to bake the sky-high Nanterre loaf. This dough did take four hours for the second rise, one hour more than the recipe said, but it was worth the wait. The texture is much better than store-bought, mass-produced brioche.

Since there is a section on sourdough, I was pleased to see the the large majority of the recipes don’t require a sourdough starter. Some that suggest using a couple of tablespoons of sourdough have an alternate method, which I used in the swirl bread. Except for my brioche dough, the times given for mixing, shaping, rising, and baking in a bar graph at the top of each recipe worked perfectly for me, and the directions are clear with plenty of color photos. There are quite a few more breads I’m looking forward to baking!

Brenda