The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

tea

baybakin's picture
baybakin


I walked into my specialty foods market, and there they were,  staring back at me.  Sitting next to the key limes and tangelos,  the yellow-orange skinned globes begged me to stick a nose in the display.  Bergmont orange season, short lived as it is, had arrived.  Almost without thinking, I tossed a few into my basket.

Bergmont orange zest is the major flavor component in earl grey tea, and as I was enjoying a nice cup of earl grey, inspiration took hold; Earl Grey Sticky Buns!  The sweet dough is based on Richard Bertinet's, and the basic idea is based off of "Orange Sticky buns" from an issue of Saveur.  The dough is given a cold-retard at least overnight in the fridge to develop flavor, in lieu of a pre-ferment.

Sweet Dough (Make the day previous to bake day):
510g Bread Flour
225g Strong Brewed Black Tea (cool)
100g (2) Egg
56g Unsalted Butter
37g Sugar (I use evaporated cane)
20g Dry Milk
10g Salt
4g Instant Yeast

Mix until shaggy dough is formed. Rest for 20 mins. Kneed until gluten is well formed. Retard overnight (or longer).

Filling:
112g Unsalted butter, soft (1 stick)
zest of 2 bergmont oranges (chopped fine)
zest of 1 small meyer lemon (if more zest is wanted, optional)
125g raw sugar (brown sugar if you can't find raw)

Roll dough into a large rectangle, spread filling evenly across dough.  Roll up dough into cylinder, cut into 12 pieces and place into a buttered baking dish (mine is 9"x12").  Bake untill cooked though at 325F.  Frost if desired.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

The storm has come and it has delivered as promised.  Here on the South Shore of Long Island where I live we spent most of the morning digging out of 20+ inches of icy heavy snow.  In between the snow plowing and digging I managed to shape and get my latest bread in the oven.

Using the 36 hour technique I adapted from TxFarmer's blog posts on The Fresh Loaf, I made a hearty style loaf with my favorite cherry flavored tea, fresh chopped cherries and some oat flour.  I used the oat flour in the levain as well as the final dough.  Some potato flour and malted wheat flakes were added to round out this dough.

The end result was a nice moist crumb with a great chewy crust with cherry chunks.  This was a large loaf and took almost 2 hours to bake.  I lowered the temperature to 425 F. to prevent the crust from getting too dark which is one of the reasons why it took so long.

This exciting technique takes a while but it is worth it. I actually let the dough retard longer than 24 hours called for in the recipe due to my schedule and I don't think it effected the final bread either way.

Directions

Starter Build 1

104 grams Seed Starter (Mine is a 65% White AP starter)

100 grams Oat Flour (KAF)

200 grams European Style Flour (KAF)

203 grams Water at Room Temperature (80-90 degrees F.)

Mix ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around 8 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed.

Starter Build 2

All Starter from Build #1:

35 grams Water at Room Temperature (80-90 degrees F.)

Mix ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around  4 - 6 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed.

Main Dough Ingredients

300 grams  Starter  from above (note: you should have a small amount left over)

450 grams European Style Flour

200 grams Oat Flour (KAF)

100 grams Potato Flour

100 grams Malted Wheat Flakes

20 grams Seas Salt or Table Salt

88 grams Fresh Cherries (Pitted and chopped)

600 grams Cherry Tea Iced  (Make sure the tea is ice-cold before using.  I added the hot tea to ice cubes)

Procedure

Mix the flours, malted wheat flakes and the ice tea together in your mixer or by hand until it just starts to come together, maybe about 1 minute.  Put the dough in a slightly covered oiled bowl and put in the refrigerator for 12 hours.

The next day add your starter and salt to the dough and mix by hand until it is thoroughly mixed and evenly distributed.  Due to the high water content in the 100% hydration starter this dough is very easy to mix by hand and is very silky and smooth.

Bulk rise at room temperature for 2-3 hours until it grows around 1/3 in volume doing stretch and folds every half hour until it has developed the correct amount of strength.  During the last stretch and fold flatten out the dough slightly into a rectangle and add the chopped cherries.

Put the dough back into the refrigerator for around 20-30 hours.  I ended up letting it go around 30 hours.

When you take the dough out of the refrigerator you want it to have almost doubled in volume.  Mine only rose about 1/3 in volume.  Let it rise at room temperature for around 2 hours or until the dough has doubled from the night before.

Next, shape as desired.  I made a large Miche and placed it in my cloth lined basket.  Make sure you use enough rice flour with flour in your bowl/basket to prevent this moist dough from sticking.

Cover the dough with a moist towel and let sit at room temperature for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Score as desired and prepare your oven for baking with steam.

Set your oven for 500 degrees F. at least 45 minutes before ready to bake.  When ready to bake place the loaves into your on  your oven stone with steam and lower the temperature immediately to 450 degrees.   Since this loaf was so big I ended up lowering the oven after 35 minutes to around 425 degrees.  When the loaf is nice and brown and reached an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. you can remove it from the oven.

Let the loaves cool down for at least an 3 hours or so before eating as desired.

Cat-Angel Bell Weathering the Storm
The Dolphin is Trying to stay above the snow
Misty waiting for some Cherry Sourdough.....okay so she's waiting for some Kibble!
kiki's picture
kiki

3 kinds of bean bread (green soy bean & cheese bread, soft soy milk bun with green soy bean, sweet black bean bun)

 

Black Bean Bread

 

Earl Grey Tea Loaf

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

In a comment to my "Holiday Bake" blog Andy posted a formula for the Welsh tea bread Bara Brith, which I made today according to his formula with great success.

The formula mentions nothing about the baking profile - I made a 1300 g loaf in a tin, and baked for 50 minutes, starting at 230C and gradually turning the heat down to 170C after 40 minutes.

And I didn't use all of the tea. But the formula gave us a really great tasting fruit bread with a slight aftertaste of black tea.

Looks like it has no chance to age ... (Some sources say this gets even better over time.

Here a couple of pictures:

 

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