Roman style Lamb | home | Sweet French Toast

Fruit Bread

I haven’t baked any regular bread for the weekend, slack I know, but we can usually get by without bread on the weekends as I tend to bake bread like things for lunch or breakfast. Anyway, Lea noticed this and expressed disappointment at not being able to have French Toast for Mother’s Day breakfast.

Thus, I decided (somewhat late) that I should bake a loaf especially for said purpose. However, because normal French Toast is somewhat uninteresting, I’ve decided to make a fruit loaf, then make French Toast out of that and serve with Maple Syrup. It’ll be a nice treat.


Of course, having started late, I decided that I wasn’t going to bake it before going to bed, so it will proof in either in the fridge or on the bench (depending on how cold it looks like it’ll get) overnight and I’ll bake it in the morning.

I probably have a fruit bread recipe in one of the cook books, but I didn’t bother to chase one down, thus I just made it up as I went along.

h2. Ingredients.

h3. Sponge Stage

* 1.5 cups warm water
* 1 Tablespoon of active dry yeast
* 1 Tablespoon of dark brown sugar
* 1 cup of plain white flour

h3. Dough Stage

* 1 cup of whole wheat plain flour
* 1 cup of plain white flour
* 1 Tablespoon (level) of salt
* third of a cup of muscat grape sultanas (marketed here as Sunmucats)
* quarter of a cup of blanch almond flakes
* third of a cup of currants
* 1 teaspoon of dutch cinnamon
* half a teaspoon of ground cloves
* 1 teaspoon of allspice (pimento)
* half a teaspoon of dried ginger powder
* half a teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg
* extra flour – about 4 to 8 Tablespoons

h2. Method.

Prepare the sponge in your standing mixer bowl by combining all the sponge ingredients with a whisk, and allow to sit for 10 minutes, whence it should be frothy.

Add in the remaining ingredients (except the “extra flour”) and with the dough hook mix on low until the dough combines and pulls away from the side of the bowl. Add in a couple of tablespoons of the extra flour while the mixer is running. When it’s taken up the flour, stop the mixer and remove the dough from the dough hook. Inspect the dough, if it’s still sticky (not tacky, sticky), add another couple of tablespoons of flour and mix again. Repeat as necessary – you’re aiming for a tacky and moist dough (as the dried fruit will take up some of the extra moisture).

When you’ve got the consistency right, allow the machine to knead the dough for another minute or two. Turn out onto a workbench and hand knead until springy (this won’t take long, and will give you a good feel for the springiness or not, of the dough, if it’s not springy, either keep kneading or return to the mixer for a little while).

Place in a bowl greased with butter and cover. Allow to rise until doubled in bulk. You can refrigerate now overnight ready for baking in the morning (I did).

If you refrigerate the dough, you’ll need to allow it to rise for another hour and a half or two before proceeding to the proofing, which will work better in an oven heated to 50C, then turned off and allowed to cool 25 degrees before placing the dough inside for rising.

Deflate and knead the dough to a springy stage, then place in your preferred bread pan – I used the smaller one to get a higher loaf.

Proof for 45 minutes to an hour, until doubled in bulk.

Bake at 190C for 35 to 40 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack.

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posted to Breads and Baking,Recipes @ 11:43 am

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  • At 11:16 am on 11 February, 2011, Susan Fell commented:

    Gretings from sunny Australia. Thanks so much for this foolproof recipe, I have made it in various forms evrey week for over a year now, it never fails to please. I would rate it 5/5.

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Roman style Lamb | home | Sweet French Toast