buttery veneziana
I'm more and more convinced that flour was born to be used as butter carrier!
The formula for this bread is very simple:
100% bread flour (13% proteins) (300 gr)
83% whole eggs (250 gr)
40% sugar (120 gr, something more wouldn't hurt)
28% firm starter (80 gr)
83% butter (250 gr)
3% milk powder (9 gr)
2% salt (6 gr)
flavors (I used 10 gr of Marsala liquor). Orange zest and vanilla are very good candidates. Flavors are essential.
As usual: mix everything together with the paddle at high speed until the dough comes together, mix in butter in 6 portions waiting until each block is embedded, develop gluten than replace the paddle with the hook and perfect gluten development (still at high speed) until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl. It took me almost 1 hour.
The dough should rest at room temperature for 3 hours with few folds every 60 minutes, then retarded at 10°C. After 4 days fold once more and insert the dough (seams down) in the mold until the sides reach the rim. Bake at 170°C in static mode starting from cold oven until a skeeter inserted in the middle comes out clean and dry, then hang head down until the bread is completely cold, just like for panettone. Don't bake too long of teh crumb will be too dry.
The glaze requires 20 gr of hazelnuts and 20 gr of almonds ground with 80 gr of sugar and mixed with enough egg whites to get a smooth paste.
Before baking
baked and cooled
crumb
Rather than oven spring I should speak of oven burst:). The dough weighted 980 gr, supposedly perfect for a 1 kg mold, but evidently it was too much.
The crumb is ethereal, weightless, the taste is rich, very buttery (guess why?). It's dangerously good!
Comments
running the KA for an hour has me looking for a new mixer after it burns up :-) Still, near panettone in half the time :-) Love your mushroom shape too. i would dream up a name and lay claim to a new shape that this recipe is always supposed to look like :-) i like Nicozias!
Well done.
indeed, DA! :)
Hi Nico,
I see you have joined in with Michael W. and his soft and lofty breads though yours really did take off in the oven! With the ingredient list I see why looks matter not at all. Not a cheap loaf to bake either with all the butter, eggs and nuts involved. Interesting that it bulk ferments for 4 days and doesn't over ferment. ALmost like Syd's 'Asian Style Pan de Mie' which takes 4 days too but the mixing is broken up throughout those days.
With the holidays approaching I just might have to give this a try when butter goes down in price around here :-) THanks for the post and the photos.
Take Care,
Janet
I seriously need to get myself a mixer... There's no way I can produce similar results by hand.
All in all, a scrumptious bake. With all those enrichments, it has to be. :)
Zita
Thanks everybody!
Janet, Iì'm curious. How much does butter cost where you live? I pay mine 1.59 euro per 250 gr block. Stuff like this bread is unforgettable:-)
Baking, indeed a dough like this one is impossible to make by hand. get a cheap stand mixer and you'll get incredible results.
Butter I buy is organic and I pay approx. $5.00 (not sure how a euro compares with our dollar….) a pound (455g). When it goes on sale around the holidays the price drops to about $4.00 a pound so I stock up and just store it in my freezer until needed.
Janet
Did the 4 day fermentation counteract the chewiness that bread flour oftentimes imparts? You had another recent recipe (brioche?) that had an outrageous ( to me) cold retardation that ended up with a featherlight crumb. Does the long retardation somehow degrade the chewiness of the gluten? What would happen if AP flour was used?
I have a 35 year old KA that would handle the long mix just fine. I don't think I'd try it in a more modern machine. They just aren't the same workhorses that they used to be.
Butter is US $3-$4/pound/454g here in Wisconsin, USA and Wisconsin is called "The Dairy State" . I can get it on sale in November for $2-$2.50/454g before the holidays. I buy enough for the year and freeze.
Your loaf is GORGEOUS! It looks like it would float off the plate.
Hi Clazar, the crumb was so incredibly soft that slicing it was very difficult! The bread didn't seem to have any weight when I lifted it. Featherlight is a perfect description of the consistence of the crumb, absolutely nothing to do with bread flour's typical gumminess.
I don't think that AP flour would permit a decent agglutination. Even with bread flour the final dough was extremely slack, that is to be expected with all that butter and sugar.
Thanks very much.
When it goes on sale for $1.99 a pound during the Holiday stock up season I fill the freezer too! It's not Kerrygold but what is?
And with a little red wine... I'd call it great with friends!
sweet of course, a lot! You always choose the best pairings, Mini!
You remind me that the first times I posted my recipes on TFL I used to refer to them as "cake" because they contained sugar, but over the years I learned that Americans use to call organically-risen doughs "sweet bread" or "bread", whether yeasted or risen by means of sourdough, using instead the term "cake" to refer to sweet, chemically risen compounds.
Please, correct me if I'm mistaken.
It is still a lovely cake and I can imagine sitting and eating it like cotton candy, pulling off light pieces relishing every tear and bite. I can almost hear the light crunch of the crust topping... smell a sweet dark red wine...
Oops, I better stop day-dreaming and check on my rolls.