pan de piña y piloncillo, or, from Turkey to Mexico by way of Hawaii?
Hello everyone,
Franko very kindly told me about a baking textbook that was available for sale online: On Baking
(authors Sarah Labensky, Priscilla Martel, Klaus Tenbergen and Eddie Van Damme).
Happily, I purchased the book, and once it arrived, the first thing I made was Turkish Pide Bread,
a round loaf with a pretty, diamond-patterned and sesame-coated crust:
On the weekend, I saw this pineapple pattern on my friend’s tablecloth -
it reminded me of the Turkish bread’s crust:
Pineapple bread! I thought…and found a formula for Hawaiian Pineapple Sweet Bread in Advanced Bread and Pastry...
and Janie’s recent post about bakers from Mexico [1]got me thinking about Mexican sweets and flavors.
[1]
Wanting to make this pineapple bread but being short of time, I made a sponge-based version of the ABAP formula, substituting a small amount of medium rye and whole wheat flour, and adding some fresh pineapple (diced, then caramelized with Mexican piloncillo sugar [2] and unsalted butter, then flavored with small amounts of Mexican canela (cinnamon) and vanilla bean paste. This is how the pineapple turned out (yum!):
Here is the baked bread, kind of lumpy-looking but completely delicious:
pineapple-brown sugar bread, or pan de piña y piloncillo :^)
To make the diamond pattern, I started by rolling with a thin dowel, but this dough was springy and the marks left by the dowel would not remain. I used a bench scraper to impress the diamond pattern on the dough, and went over the pattern a few times during proofing, and one last time, right before the bread went into the oven.
The pineapple flavor completely infused throughout the crumb – loved how this tasted!
Here is the crumb:
(ice cream drizzled with some of the caramel sauce was a lovely accompaniment)
This is my adaptation of Mr. Suas' formula (1200 grams, to make 2 pineapple breads):
I enjoyed letting my oven 'travel around the world' for this bake :^)
(borrowing the phrase from this baker’s post [3])
With thanks to Mr. Suas for another fantastic formula – will have to try the levain version of his Hawaiian Pineapple Sweet Bread!
Happy baking everyone!
:^) breadsong
Submitted to Susan for YeastSpotting [4]