Herbed Pull-Apart Bread - A Guest Post By Sumana Deepak

Few things make the day of a food blogger like meaningful comments do. One such meaningful comment lead me to Sumana's blog, Sum's Cuisine. A fellow Bangalorean and a Kannadiga, it was so easy to connect! Food bonds undoubtedly, but when we cook, eat and blog about similar kind of grub, its even better! I have not met Sumana yet, but very much look forward to meeting her some day and also eat a meal at her place, only now its Sweden!! Her blog Sum's Cusine has lots of Authentic Karnataka Cuisine , eggless bakes and lots more! Her Eggless Zebra Cake , Spicy Biscotti,  Avarekalu Kadubu, Gorikayi Matodi Palya  among so many others make me wish I had visited her when she was still here, sigh!!

Here comes Sumana with an amazing Herbed pull apart bread - spicy mint and cilantro chutney encased in a soft yeast bread , baked in a bundt pan...I can almost smell the aroma!

  
Over to Sumana...

When Suma asked me to do a guest post for her lovely, delicious blog, I was more than delighted! She has such a beautiful blog with so many amazing delicacies. And I just love her witty writing. I make sure I don’t miss her post for two things - a nice write up and a nicer delicacy! Every time I want to bake something, I’d definitely look up in her blog for something.

So when she asked me to guest post for her blog, my first thought was a cake, but for someone who has baked almost half a century of varieties of cakes and cup cakes, finding another cake to match was a difficult task! So here I am with a yeast bread, another of her passion.

This is herbed, garlicky pull apart bread, with herbs like mint and coriander. It can be made with Italian herbs too, dried or fresh. The recipe is adapted from Champa’s pull apart loaf here, but halved and baked in a bundt pan. Love the shape a bundt pan gives to a bread! It is a very tasty bread.

Herbed Pull Apart Bread from here

Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 1 ½ cups
Warm water - ½ cup
Salt - ½ - ¾ tsp
Sugar - 1½ tsp
Oil - 1 TBSP
Active dry yeast /Instant Yeast - 1 tsp
Green chilies - 1 chopped fine
Mint leaves - 6 chopped fine
Cilantro - 1 TBSP chopped

To make a paste:
Oil - 1 Tbsp
Salt - to taste (about ½ tsp or less)
Green chilies - 2 chopped
Mint leaves - 1-2 Tbsp
Cilantro - 1-2 Tbsp
Garlic - 1 clove

Method:
Dough:
• In a bowl, take warm water, sugar. Add yeast to it. Let it stand till it froths. If using instant yeast, can proceed to next step without proofing.
• Add the remaining ingredients to it and start making a dough. When all the flour has been absorbed, knead it for 10 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic. It should not be sticky or tacky. If it is, add 1 TBSP flour at a time and knead it.
• Place in an oiled bowl and turn it once to coat all the sides.
• Cover and let rise in a warm place. About 45 minutes to an hour or till double in bulk.
• Meanwhile, grease a bundt pan with oil on all sides. Set aside.

Spice paste:
• In a food chopper or blender (small jar) or mortar and pestle, take all the ingredients mentioned in 'For paste' and mince them so that it is a coarse paste with some oil. Don’t add any water. Adjust the salt if necessary and set aside.

Assembly:
• When the dough has doubled, punch it down. On a lightly floured or greased surface, divide the dough into 12 small portions.
• Take one dough ball and flatten it to about ½" thick. A rough oval shape will be fine. Repeat with the remaining dough balls.
• Place one dough ball in the pan, top it with little bit of the paste and spread it. Make sure you use the paste evenly to coat all the dough balls.
• Arrange the dough balls in the pan in two layers, with paste coated between them.
• If you have any more paste remaining, you can spread it on the top.
• Even if the dough is not full in the pan, it will get full after the final rise.
• Cover loosely with oiled plastic wrap and let it rise till the dough is double. About 45 minutes to an hour.

Baking:
• Towards the end of the rise time, preheat the oven to 375 F or 190 C.
• Bake for 15 minutes. Rotate the pan and reduce the temperature to 350 F or 180 C. Bake for 5 - 8 more minutes or until the top is golden brown.
• Cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then invert it on the wire rack to cool completely.
• Pull the bread when completely cool if you can resist the smell that long. I pulled it when it was still warm, just like Champa did :).
• It tastes great!

Notes:
• To make a 9x5 loaf, double the recipe
• Keep the pan vertically and stack the pieces one on top of another till finished. Keep it back horizontally and adjust the stack and bake for 25 min at 190 C and 5-8 min at 180 C.

Thanks so much Sumana for this lip-smacking good bread! Its really sweet of you to send this treat my way!