Something lovely: Raisin bread

[M6NEN 2]

I'll give you a recipe of something which people in Flanders love to eat for breakfast on a Sunday morning.

Excellent to eat with a cup of strong coffee or even hot chocolate.

Equipment needed:

Kitchen scales, kitchen machine with whisk and kneading hook (you can do the beating and kneading by hand, but the machine makes it so much easier), a sieve, plastic foil, a kitchen brush and an oblong bread tin (about 25 centimetres in length).

Ingredients:

• 500 grammes of flour
• 35 grammes of fresh yeast
• 50 grammes of granulated sugar
• 100 grammes of butter + an extra lump
• 2 eggs + 1 to be kept apart for near the end
• 20 centiliters of milk
• 4 grammes of salt
• 200 grammes of raisins.

Method:

(Not strictly necessary): let the raisins soak for at least 30 minutes. (Some people do this in water, some in rhum).

Weigh all ingredients thoroughly.

Put the sugar in the bowl of the kitchen machine.

Put the bowl in the machine, use the whisk as accessory and put on medium speed.

Add the eggs and keep one to the side to glaze the dough later.

Turn up the speed of the machine until you get a pale, airy mixture.

Measure the milk, put in a small pan and heat until lukewarm.

Crumble the yeast into the lukewarm milk and stir until the yeast is completely dissolved.

Add the butter to the milk, lump by lump and let them melt slowly, keep one lump to the side to grease the bread tin later.

Add the flower to the mixture of sugar and eggs, also add the salt.

Put the bowl back into the kitchen machine, but now use the kneading hook to knead everything to a dough.

While kneading, add the milk slowly and bit by bit.

Let the machine knead until you get an equal and elastic dough. Meanwhile, put the soaked raisins in a sieve and let them leak out.

Lower the speed of the machine and add the raisins to the dough.

Stir the dough briefly so the raisins are equally divided through the dough and put it into a deep bowl, cover with a sheet of plastic foil. Make sure the bowl gives the dough enough space to rise.

Let the dough rise in a plce without temperature changes for about 40 minutes. The volume will about double.

Pre-heat the oven on 180ºC.

Use a lump of soft butter to grease the inside of the bread tin.

Put the dough in the bread tin and press lightly.

Beat an egg yolk with a tiny dash of water, brush this onto the top of the dough.

Bake the bread for about 30 to 35 minutes at 180ºC. Check regularly, as the exact baking time depends a lot on the oven.

A trick: When you tap the bread and you hear a hollow sound, it means the bread is ready.

Take the bread out of the tin and let it cool down.

Eat spreaded with lovely fresh farm butter.

PS. My apologies for using only European measurements here (that's all I'm familiar with), but you can easily find conversion tables via Google et al.

 

 

 

 

 

[yordan 10]

Seems tasty, looking at the picture!

[M6NEN 2]

It definitely is.

We bake one from time to time for breakfast on a Sunday.

Very good with coffee or hot chocolate.

And especially, spread on the fresh farm butter quite thick.

It is really a pleasure to eat.

Oh yes, one thing I forgot: totally optional, but you can add some cinnamon too if you wish.

 

I would really advise you to give it  a try, it does require a bit of time and preparation, but the effort is well worth it and it is not difficult.

If you do make one, let me know how you got on, please.

 

Edited February 15, 2019 by M6NEN (see edit history)

[OpaQue 15]

Wow! Thank you Frankie for the wonderful recipe. I am definitely going to give this a try.

[M6NEN 2]

It really is well worth it.

It takes a bit of work but leads to such a lovely end produce.

Of course, as with all recipes, it takes a little bit of experimenting (according to one's taste), with regards to exactly how much milk or sugar to add.

Everyone's palate is different, and some people like it a bit more moist or a bit sweeter, or less sweet, that is why giving a recipe is never an exact science.

However, I am convinced that everyone who will try it will be pleasantly surprised and will be back for more.

 

[yordan 10]

1 minute ago, M6NEN said:

giving a recipe is never an exact science

However, it's a good starting point for some newbies.

Experienced cookers don't use any recipe, and some of them  cannot transmit their know-how, they simply say "I put the necessary sugar the I pour the flour and add milk".

[M6NEN 2]

1 minute ago, yordan said:

However, it's a good starting point for some newbies.

Experienced cookers don't use any recipe, and some of them  cannot transmit their know-how, they simply say "I put the necessary sugar the I pour the flour and add milk".

Well, you definitely have a poin there, yordan, because both my kitchen princess and me, when we cook, we rarely or never weigh our ingredients, we are used to our recipes and we know how much roughly to use of this and that so that we can do it "blindly", so to speak.

Only liquids we measure sometimes.

 

The BIG exception, however, is baking, both breadmaking and pastry baking ("pâtisserie", as you would call it), especially the last one, there everything has to be weighed carefully.

This might sound contradictory in what I wrote earlier in the post about adjustments to the raisin bread, but, that was, once again, a matter of experience.

And, i obviously didn't mean you could just whack 2 extra liters of milk into your dough. ?

I think you might experience some very unpleasant surprises then.

However, there is another one to come with a bit of a fun element.

Watch this space.