Yeasted Banana Sandwich Bread

 

Thanks to Aparna for introducing this pretty simple, wonderfully flavored, slightly sweet sandwich bred for this month challenge at We Knead To Bake #31. The original recipe adopted from kingarthurflour. 

Ingredients:   2 cups of whole wheat flour     ;     1 cup of bread flour   ;     3/4 cup of lukewarm milk     ;       25 gms of soft butter    ;     2 tsp of instant yeast      ;      1 tsp of salt       ;     1 tbsp of honey     ;     2 med- sized banana chopped ( about 1 ½ cups )      ;    1/4 tsp of powdered cardamom     ;     1/8 cup of chopped walnuts 

Method:   Add all the ingredients except the milk, in a large bowl and gentle whisk for a while and add 3/4 cup of milk and knead until to get shaggy dough. Add more milk to get right dough consistency.

Knead further by hand until to get a soft, smooth and elastic dough but, not sticky. Shape it into a ball and place it in an oiled bowl and cover with damp cloth for about 1 1/2 hours or 2 hours or till it become double in volume.

Gently deflate the dough and shape the dough into a greased 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf tin and cover the loaf with damp cloth for about an hour or it raise almost at the edges of your loaf tin.

Brush the dough with  little milk and sprinkle with little oats and Bake at 180°C pre-heated oven for about  40 to 50 minutes or till the bread is nice brown on top and sounds hollow when tapped. 

Allow it to cool completely before slicing it. The aroma of bread with cardamom and banana is divine.

Beet Pita Bread

Pita Bread is made for filling. the perfect pita bread should split its pockets for filling. But in my last Pita bread, Instead of filling, I did topping on the bread like pizza.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, it’s a soft, slightly leavened flat bread quite popular in Middle Eastern cuisines. This time, wanted to do the fillings in the Pita pocket and also do some natural coloring on the bread.

Ingredient :  ½  cup of raw beet root juice          ;         1 ½ cup all purpose flour      ;       1 tsp of salt        ;       1 tsp of instant yeast        ;        2 tbsp of olive oil 

Add yeast, salt in to the ½ cup lukewarm beet root juice (by keeping the juice 30sec in the microwave) in a large mixing bowl and keep it aside for 5 min.

Add oil to the yeast mixture and stir to dissolve. Add the 1 cup of all-purpose flour and whisk together. Stir until mixture forms a shaggy mass. Dust with a little flour and then knead in bowl for 1 minute. Add slowly the rest of the flour and form a kind of dry dough.

Continue to knead lightly until to form smooth dough. Cover bowl with damp cloth and keep it at the room temperature for about 1 hour or it’s doubled in size.

Meanwhile, Pre-heat the oven at 200ºC with (cast iron plate in, refer here for more details)

Punch down dough and divide into 4 pieces of equal size to form a ball shape. Place dough balls on work surface, cover with a damp cloth and leave for 10 minutes.

Take out the one ball at a time and press into a flat disc and roll into a 6-inch circle, 1/8 inch thick with rolling pin. (Dust with flour if required)

Carefully lift the dough circle and place quickly on Cast iron plat in the oven. After 3 - 4 minutes the bread should be nicely puffed. With tongs flip it over and bake for 1 minute.

Allow to cool and open the pocket and stuff with your choice of veg or non-veg.

Dates Carmel Chocolate bar

My taste buds demand to taste chocolate. Also, I afraid (!) may lose the chocolate tempering skill. :-)  Its time to listen to my taste buds. I also left with some dates, sitting on the storage rack for long and wanted to use in the chocolate bar. 

Dates and chocolate alone may not go very well. But, dates coated with caramel will do the job perfect. The chocolate and caramel will melt (in the mouth) faster and at the end chewing the caramel coated dates and cashews…..Imm……along with black coffee, yes…..yes, you guessed it right, its………Divine !

Ingredient   :   8 nos of dates (pitted)         ;        1 ½ tbsp. of finely chopped roasted cashews       ;         1 tbsp. of butter       ;        1 tbsp of sugar         ;       100 gms tempered chocolate (60 % coco)        ;        2tbsp of heavy cream         ;       1/4 tsp of corn syrup 

Soak dates in a 1 tbsp of water and grind into fine paste. In thick bottom pan add sugar and heat up until the color change to amber, and then add corn syrup, butter, dates paste, and heavy cream.  Allow to boil till it become thick caramel consistency.

 

Remove the pan from heat, add chopped cashew and keep aside. 

In chocolate mold spread the tempered chocolate (up to ¼) and keep it in the fridge for some time to set. Remove the mold from fridge and spread the caramel (up to ½ in the mold) again into the fridge to set. Finally, fill the remaining (1/4 of the mold) with tempered chocolate and allow to set in the fridge.

P.S : I could have given little more time to set the chocolate well. Sorry, I couldn’t resist myself.    :-)