Walnut & Red Wine Bread

This is a direct dough, using few ingredients, easy to make, but has a great flavor. It is actually Dan Lepard’s “Simple Walnut Tin Loaf”, but I bake it on hearth instead. The crust is cripsy, and the crumb is very tender and moist. There are many walnuts in this bread, and so the walnut flavor dominates (wheat flavor is weak). As there is red wine, I can taste a slight red wine flavor too. I like this combination.

The liquid used to prepare the dough is interesting. It is 50g walnuts, 125ml red wine, 75ml water and 2tbps olive oil blended together. I cannot taste the walnut flavor from the liquid, but the red wine flavor instead. So without eating the walnut bits, the dough has only red wine flavor. During kneading, my dough was a bit dry, so I added more water to the strength I wanted.

(I baked the proofed doughs at 200C for 20mins on hearth, each weighs about 160g)

Recipe: from Dan Lepard’s Forum or The Guardian

Coffee Coconut Swirl Bread

Finally I have time to make bread, and this bread came up to my mind immediately. Um, it must be one of my favourites.

Besides Bo Lo Bao and Cocktail Bun, which are still the two most popular buns in Hong Kong, this bread is also a specialty here. However, it is not easy to find now. The market of coffee flavored bakery items here is small.

Even so, some people still miss this bread, including me. It is because I like coffee, and coffee and coconut are great match.

Luckily the bread is not hard to make. It is basically a white bread dough, plus a filling made of coffee, coconut, butter and sugar.

The white bread recipe is from Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. It is a soft and tasty dough which I use as the basic dough for many other breads. The filling is created by myself.

As you can see, the bread is highlighted with a moist filling. So do use your fingers to tear the bread and enjoy! Feel the juicy and aromatic filling with the soft bread in your mouth….. Yummy!

White Bread (Adapted from Page43 of Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”

Bread Flour 350g

Salt 7g

Sugar 28g

Powdered Milk 21g

Instant Yeast 3g

Egg 14g

Shortening 28g

Water 203g

Mix, knead & ferment the dough as other common straight doughs. To make the swirl, after 1st fermentation, roll the dough to 8inches x 5inches. Sprinkle & slightly press the filling to the dough. Roll tight & seam. Bake at 180C for 40mins (rotate half way) after 2nd fermentation (I think the bread is a bit dry this time with my oven, I’ll try to bake 5mins less next time).

Filling (mix together)

Unsalted Butter 24g

Egg 24g

Shredded Coconut 48g

Sugar 40g

Instant Coffee Powder 1 1/4 tps (dissolve with few drops of hot water)

Soya and Linseed Loaf

This recipe is from Dan Lepard. The bread doesn’t contain any egg, butter or milk products, but stays soft & moist for days because of the soya milk in it. It is because of the soya protein, you may see Dan’s reply here.

I used King Arthur All Purpose Flour and rye flour from a local shop to prepare the dough. The dough is quite sticky at the beginning, but gluten is formed like usual enriched doughs after Dan’s first fermentation method. The crumb of the bread is satisfying.

As it’s not an enriched dough, the crumb is a bit chewy. I could not taste the soy milk flavor, and the taste is similar to light wheat bread. I could also feel the linseed in every bite. Crust is thicker than usual. Overall, the bread is good with nothing and anything.

The bread is also healthy and rich in Omega-3 and protein too.

Recipe: In Dan Lepard’s Forum or the Guardian

White Chocolate Chip Bread

This is the milkiest loaf I ever had. The interesting thing is the dough itself doesn’t contain any milk or milk powder, and is in fact a lean dough instead of an enriched one, making it different from regular loaves. It’s the white chocolate chips which give the strong milk flavor, and I like them not sweet eating with the crumb together at all.

The bread makes great toasts. You could see the chocolate chips have formed little holes inside the bread, and when toasted, the little holes would be caramelized outside but lacy inside, producing two different textures and tastes. The fact is I had three pieces in one time. Yum!

Recipe: Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum