290:365 Rising - Updated

Rising
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: The girls and I are having our first bread baking day in the new place. So much counter space! It's wonderful!

I've got a Kitchen Aide mixer with dough hook, but it only fits a 2 loaf recipe, so we did three batches. That works out rather well, since we can do each batch differently.

In this photo is the third batch, just set aside for rising. We made it using olive oil, saffron (you can see a couple of threads in the dough), some milk and a couple of eggs. Oh, and we finished off the last of our dark honey with a comb in the jar for the sweetener. I did end up picking out little bits of wax while doing the final kneading. ;-) It was so lovely to knead - smooth and satiny. Much more pleasant to handle than the one with softened oatmeal in it.

If this one works out well, it'll be the bread for our Easter basket.

update: For some reason, blogger isn't letting me reply in my own comments area, so this is in response to Ash's comment.

They turned out lovely! A nice, chewy texture and golden colour. We couldn't taste the saffron a lot, but we didn't use a huge amount, either. It was definitely a hit.

I'd made half the dough into a braid, then formed it into a wreath. I made 4 "snails" out of the other half; one for each of us. It was wonderful, still hot from the oven and covered with melted butter. Yum!

As for the recipe, we use the same basic recipe for almost all our breads. These are the quantities for a 2 loaf batch.

1-2 Tbsp yeast
1-4 Tbsp sweetener
1/4 cup butter or oil (optional)
2 1/2 - 2 3/4 cups warm liquid
2 tsp salt
6-8 cups flour

To make the saffron bread, we soaked a few threads in about a tablespoon of boiled water first. For the liquid, we used 1 cup milk, then topped it off with the boiled water to make 2 1/4 cups. The saffron threads and their water was added to that. For the sweetener, we used an Italian brand of honey called "Clic - honey with honey comb," but any honey works well. The fat was Extra Virgin Olive oil, and the flour was plain old All Purpose, since that's all I've got at the moment. We also added 2 eggs, plus used an egg wash for baking.