Portuguese Sweet Bread

Recipe by Cook's Hideout

For day 2 of BM, I made this sweet yeast bread from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baking Apprentice cookbook. I’ve been meaning to make this bread for a long time and even bought orange and lemon extracts to use. Finally I got to make for this bread baking week. This bread is rich with the addition of eggs, butter and powdered milk. It smells heavenly while baking and tastes equally amazing. I have one loaf in the freezer that I intend to use very soon.This recipe starts with a sponge that is fermented for 1-1.5 hours before adding the other ingredients...

Ingredients

• ½ cup bread flour (Unbleached)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsps yeast (Instant)
• ½ cup water ((@ room temperature))
• 3 cups bread flour (Unbleached)
• 6 tbsps sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• ¼ cup milk (Powdered)
• 2 tbsps unsalted butter
• 2 tbsps shortening (Vegetable – (I didn’t have any and used 2tbsp butter instead))
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp zest and juice of lemon (extract)
• 1 tsp orange (extract)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 6 tbsps water ((@ room temperature))
• 1 tsps 1 egg water (, whisked with until frothy)

Method

1. For the Sponge: Mix all the ingredients for the sponge in a small bowl until everything is well incorporated into a smooth batter. Cover with plastic wrap and ferment at room temperature for 60-90 minutes or until the sponge gets foamy.
2. For the dough: Combine sugar, salt, powdered milk, butter and shortening in a mixing bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer). Cream together using a wooden spoon (or the paddle attachment) until smooth and then mix in the eggs and the extracts.
3. Knead by hand (or switch to the dough hook attachment). Mix in the sponge and the flour. Add water as needed to make soft and supple dough – dough should be very easy to handle and should not be wet or sticky. It will take about 10 to 12 minutes in the stand mixer and 15 minutes by hand to get to this consistency.
4. Transfer the dough into a lightly oiled bowl; roll it around to coat it with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about 2 hours at room temperature or until the dough rises to double its rise.
5. Remove the dough from the bowl and divide into 2 equal halves. Form each of the half into a boule; coat 2 9” pie pans with cooking spray and gently place the boules seam side down. (I used 8” round cake pans instead of the pie pans). Mist the tops with cooking spray, cover loosely with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 2-3 hours at room temperature.
6. The recipe says that the dough should fill the pans fully, doubling in size and overlapping the edges slightly. Neither of my boules reached this stage after 3 hours of proofing. Not sure if this is due to the cold temperatures or something else. I went ahead and baked them anyway and as you can see they came out pretty good.
7. Preheat the oven to 350°F with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Gently brush the loaves with egg wash.
8. Bake the loaves for 50-60 minutes or until they register 190°F in the center. After about 30 minutes, check the loaves and rotate them 180° for even browning. Because of the high amount of sugar in the recipe bread turns brown very fast, but that doesn’t mean that they are baked all the way through. Final color of the bread will be rich mahogany color.
9. Remove the breads from the pans and place on a wire rack to cool. Wait for at least 90 minutes before slicing or serving.

View the recipe instructions at Cook's Hideout