Minty Spiral Bread

My new love - nope, am happily married and very much in love with hubby after 11 years of marriage, thank you:-). Am talking about breads.  My humongous sweet tooth makes me bake cakes and desserts ever so often. The smell of vanilla or the sight of chocolate makes me hunt a cake or dessert recipe and get it on my table as soon as I can. But breads calling out to me - hey, this is new!!  My first attempt at baking bread was a disaster, my second one, the Masala Bread was successful. The third attempt, though the same recipe, had me and my  family polishing off the last crumb. I had never imagined myself baking breads or poring(read salivating) over bread recipes. Aah.. the sheer magic and pleasure of home baking!! Am I so glad I have started baking breads...

Baking breads(oh,forgive me, for the repetitive usage of the phrase so often in one post), I think, has one huge advantage. You get to satisfy your craving for baking without the sugar overload or without having to mark days in the calendar to check if its been a decent gap between the sugar and possibly high fat  intake in the guise of a cake or dessert.  Am enjoying my tryst with yeast tremendously and looking forward to a long love affair with breads...

After baking Masala Bread, I had promised my Dad that I would get him some of the same the next time I baked. I tried the basic bread recipe from Champa again, with a little twist,( literally:-) and out came from my oven a delightful Minty Spiral Bread.

You can find the original recipe here. This is what I did.

Ingredients: 

• Warm water - 1 Cup
• Sugar- 2 TBSP
• Oil - 2 TBSP
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Active dry yeast - 2 1/4 tsp or 1 packet
• Bread flour or all purpose flour - 3 - 3 1/4 cups (I have used 3 cups)
• Mint leaves 1 1/2 cups, washed and finely chopped(Use parsley or coriander with garlic instead if you wish)
• Green chillies, slit lengthwise, 2
• Salted butter, softened - 2 tablespoons

In a large bowl, combine warm water, sugar and yeast.(I started with 3/4 cup water as I had planned to add onion and then decided to skip it, I have eventually used approximately 1 cup of water)  Let it sit for about 10 minutes or till frothy. Now add the salt, oil. Mix well. Slowly start adding flour to make a smooth dough. Knead for 10 minutes.

Coat with oil, cover with a clean kitchen towel and let it rest for about an hour or till double in volume.(Mine took a good 2 and a half hours, whew!) A series of mails to Champa before I finished baking this bread and thanks to her for replying to all my mails so patiently.

Heat a teaspoon oil in a pan, add the green chillies and the mint leaves. Saute. Season with salt and take off the fire. Discard the chillies.(you could use pepper powder instead)

Grease a 9 X 5 pan( I have used a smaller one). After the initial rise, deflate the dough gently. Here I took about 3/4 part of the dough( you can use the entire dough if you are using a 9X5 pan I guess), rolled it into a rectangle, approximately 8X5''.(a bigger rectangle depending on the dough and size of the tin) Spread the butter evenly over the dough, and then the mint mixture. Make sure you spread it just up to the edges. Roll up the rectangle and pinch the short ends to seal. Place in the greased tin, seam side down. Cover with an oiled aluminum foil and let the dough rise in a warm place, till double. Mine took almost 2 hours again.

 Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C( 375 F.) When ready to bake, place the pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Lower the temperature to 160 degrees C (325 F) and bake for another 15-20 minutes( I have baked again for 5 minutes as the loaf is small) or till the crust is nicely brown and bottom sounds hollow when tapped. If you feel it is browning too fast, cover loosely with an aluminum foil and then bake. (Do this after the first 20 minutes of baking) Cool on wire rack. You could brush with some milk or milk and oil mixture before baking to get a nice color.

When still warm, brush with butter to get a softer crust.

This time, I made sure the loaf was out on the cooling rack after 10 minutes of  getting out of the oven. It took a lot of resolve to resist from slicing it when it was warm. The loaf came to room temperature, at last! Hubby and son(way past his bed time, but waiting for a slice of bread:-)  waited till the mandatory pics were shot. Oh, yumm.. was the reaction, it was truly one wonderful bread, the flavors of butter and mint in the fresh bread unbelievable!!

I did take the bread to my parents' place the next morning.  I wanted to share my small loaf with half the world...My Dad was a happy and proud man having tasted a slice of home-made bread for the first time ever, baked by his daughter!! Yay, yay, me the first baker in the family:-) More breads coming up on Cakes And More!!

This bread goes to Champa's Bake Off