I have questions about the recipe for Portuguese Sweet Bread in The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  Does anyone else have problems with it rising.  It never fills the pan the way it's supposed to.  I have never had a problem like this with any other bread.  I let it rise 8 hours last time I made it.  It just never filled the pan.  Any ideas. suggestions.

Hi everyone.

I am having trouble with trying to make Massa (Portuguese sweetbread) from a generations old secret family recipe.

My mother made the bread for generations until she passed away last year, her recipe box was thrown out, but myself and several nephews got together and came up with the recipe that she used.

I cut down her recipe (which was for 7 loaves at a time, and ingredients were measured in POUNDS).

I believe I have the recipe correct, and my last loaf (probably batch # 20) came out reasonably well.

The dough itself is VERY WET, it is almost a batter dough.  I made a batch last night, used my warm eggs and warm butter, and evaporated milk, and my yeast was proofed very well (it rose to 2 times the level at 6 minutes proofing, with 110 degree temp and 1 teaspoon of sugar).

(Usually you see sweetbread with a "normal" dryer dough appearance, but this bread always looked liquidy even when my mother made it)

I kneaded the bread for 30 mins (which involves grabbing a handfull, pulling,twisting over and over. I have found that a shorter kneading time makes it taste like a white bread, but longer kneading gets rid of the "pockmark appearance" on the top of the loaf and it rises quicker.

THIS BATCH howvever, instead of taking 6 hours for 1st rise sat for 10, and did not seem to double exactly.  I punched down the bread (by grabbing and kneading it a couple times) and the gluey mass went down, I discovered the dough was cold.  (I had let it sit on the counter all night with house temp at 70.  the dough did not seem to rise at all when I got yup at 330am, so I moved the dough to the oven, placed hot water under the bowl and went back to bed. When I woke at 1030, the dough had risen a tiny bit but I punched it down again anways).

Originally this recipe was made in Massachusetts, near sea level with a higher level of humidity,I now live in Ohio.   could this be an issue ?  Am I just kneading wrong or too long ?  Is my temperature not good for rising ?

I know if I try to "force the rise" by heating the oven and trying to rise the bread in the oven,  to make the bread rise quicker I get tasteless bread, almost like a white bread.  The longer rise the m,ore flavor and sweeter it seems.

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks

sean

This is my first blog entry here on TFL so here goes:

It started out like most weeks. I knocked out a couple loves of basic white bread on Monday.

My scale arrived from Amazon.com on Tuesday along with my new solder sucker and I was anxious to try it out but didn't want to get too much bread on the counter so I decided to wait. Wed completely got away from me and I didn't even cook dinner (McDonalds to the rescue) so along came Thursday and I decided to convert my usual recipe from cups to weight.

I also made a large batch of Portuguese sweet bread using a recipe from this thread (holds99)

On the upper left is the basic white loaf, all the rest is from the sweet bread recipe. (Note, I did not double the recipe. It makes a bunch of dough.

I baked a loaf of basic white again on Friday, using some Seal of Minnesota Flour that one of the grocery stores in my neck of the woods decided to carry in #50 bags (for $16.00) and it was FAB.

I usually use walmart brand cheep AP. I would post pics but we ate the evidence. Will post pics of the next loaf. I had about 20 percent more rise and the crust and crumb rival Wonder Bread! It didn't make it past breakfast the next morning.

So Saturday rolls around and my daughter (20yo) decided she wanted my wife's French Onion Soup. And she wants it in a bread bowl. (I love a challenge)

So I have been wanting to try a version of Ruchbrot (from this thread)

What I came up with was this:

650g Whole Wheat Flour

150g Rye flour

200g AP flour

650 ml water (100° f)

2-1/2 tsp yeast

2-1/2 tsp salt

--1 egg for wash--

______________

Mix everything together in a large bowl. knead everything together into a smooth dough. Let rise until doubled. Form the dough into small boules. Preheat oven to 450 ° f-475 ° f. Wash with the egg to help seal the crust. Let rise until almost doubled and bake for about 25 minutes until done. Internal temp of 195° f

I let them cool and sliced the tops off, pulled the guts out and filled. They held up beautifully, No leaks at all. even after 6 hours, no leaks.

Oh, and did I mention the bread was YUM, Earthy, Hearty, and robust.

My first pass at the Portuguese Sweet Bread turned out pretty well.  I followed the BBA recipe exactly, and I found that I only needed 24g of water per loaf of the 42g maximum Reinhart allotted.

And now that is has cooled, the crumb shot . . .

- What's a portuguese roll?
- Ohhhhhhhh, it's verrrrrrrry good.

So said Michael Stern during the April 4th episode of The Splendid Table.

They're mildly sweet with a touch of honey but don't taste "eggy" or like cake. The dough is a joy to work with and makes your kitchen smell wonderful as the buns are baking. I enjoy having them lightly toasted with a bit of jam, or just plain. I've heard they make excellent french toast, pulled pork sandwiches, or bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches too. They're simply excellent - in fact, someone told me it was even his/her new favourite bread.

These have been a huge hit among other Fresh Loafers and I couldn't agree more. :D

Thanks for sharing this recipe, Mark!

The rest of the post is here.