Braid your bread and not your hair...because its quarantine baby!

Vinaya
May 3, 2020
4 min read

I absolutely love baking breads. Making breads is so therapeutic!! If you have ever kneaded bread dough with hand, you would know what I mean. Sure it's a little bit of work, kneading the dough with hand; but man its so soft and pillowy!! Besides,breads are a very versatile product. They can be eaten as breakfast, lunch, dinner or as a dessert (I don't meet bread pudding where the bread is dunked in creme anglaise and baked or Shahi Tukda. They are just too obvious. You should try Baba au Rum! I promise you would never take your alcohol neat and in glass).

Besides, preparation wise they are such low maintenance, all you need is flour, water, salt, sugar and yeast. And in case of sourdough, not even yeast. I know they could appear to be daunting to people who have never baked a bread, but I can guarantee you that once you bake a bread, you will not buy bread from the stores!

Now that we have done with Dalgona coffee, Banana bread and homemade chaat trend.....lets rock that Instagram feed of yours with some sexy ass, fancy stuffed and braided bread! And believe me you guys, it not only looks good.....it tastes damn fantastic! Because you can have any crazy stuffing in there....

1. Pesto

2. Pesto and mozzarella

3. Peanut butter and jelly

4. Marinara and mozzarella

5. Nutella

6. Pastry cream

7. Tapenade

8. Strawberry compote and walnut

9. Caramelized Onion, Mushrooms and cheese

10. Left over of Butter chicken gravy!!!!

Well I better stop listing these stuffings or I am going to forget that I have to give you guys the recipe for it! This is the perfect...PERFECT.....treat to make when you are tired and don't want to lounge in kitchen all day. And when all this is over & we have to socialize again, you can impress your guests without much efforts!

Braided bread

Ingredients

400g Flour (All purpose flour or Type 55)

10g Instant yeast (I used instant dry yeast)

45g Sugar

50g Water-1 (for yeast)

70g Water-2

120g Milk

45g Melted butter

Pinch of salt

Egg wash (20g egg yolk + 20g milk/cream)/ Softened butter/Milk

For stuffing:

200g Pesto + 80g Feta

75g Peanut butter+100g Nutella

Process:

1. Warm water-1 in microwave upto 40*c max (15-20 secs)

2. Combine yeast, pinch of sugar, water-1 and stir. Let it rest for 5-10 mins while you prep other ingredients. It will start frothing.

3. Combine flour, salt, rest of sugar. Mix well.

4. Add rest of the liquid ingredients - water-2, milk, melted butter and the frothing activated yeast.

5. Mix everything roughly, till everything comes together in a dry and dirty ball of dough.

6. Dust some flour on work surface. Tip the loosely formed dough on work surface and start kneading the dough as showed in video here ~ https://www.instagram.com/p/BvmFEBjH2MN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

7. In the beginning the dough will snap and separate. But its okay, we are working the gluten.

8. After kneading for about 10-15 mins, the dough will not snap as much (except if you pull it too hard). It will become soft and you can do the window pane test (take a small amount of dough in your hand and start stretching it lightly till it becomes a thin almost see through film. If it tears then your dough needs some more kneading.)

9. Let the dough proof at room temperature for about 1 hr

Shaping:

1. Degas the dough slightly by knocking it back in bowl. Be gentle with the dough.

2. Dust some flour on work surface and start rolling the dough in a rectangle.

3. Spread the stuffing that you have chosen.

4. Now, with the quantity that I have given for the dough above, you can make 2 big challahs. So I separated the dough in two equal parts and rolled them. On one dough I spread Persil Pesto my neighbor had given me. On the 2nd dough I spread Peanut butter first and then Nutella on top. You can also mix the peanut butter and Nutella together and then spread it on the dough.

5. When you spread your stuffings, be sure that you don't touch the edges because we need to stick the dough together at the end and you don't want the stuffing to spill over and make the ends messy.

6. On the Pesto, I crumbled the Feta.

7. Now start rolling the dough on the long side, carefully. On the exposed edge of the bread, brush some water to help it stick to the rolling side of the dough.

8. Once you stick the edge of the dough on the smooth surface, pinch along the rim to stick them well.

9. Now slice the log of dough through middle to open it like shown in the 1st image on the left above.

10. Move the right braid of the dough on left and left one to right overlapping each other, in a twist, as shown in 2nd/middle image above. Keep on doing that till you get a twisted log of dough like in the 3rd/last image on the right above.

11. Now you can squeeze the ends towards middle and fit the braided log in a loaf pan like one shown in image below (left). Or you can roll the twisted log of dough inwards, tightly and when you reach the end, tuck it underneath the sheath of your bread. It will look like the nutella challah in the image on the right, below.