BBA Recipe #2 Artos: Greek Celebration Bread

 

This bread made me so proud I had to call my good friend Hollind to come look at it and taste it.  The second recipe in the BBA challenge  is a type of sourdough bread made with a starter; you can either do a barm which takes four days to create or a poolish which takes a few hours.  I tried the barm but my crazy gettin’-kids-off-to-school schedule blew the timing and I had to throw it out. 

This recipe is incredibly forgiving because I did lots of things wrong and yet it’s gorgeous and tastes as good as it looks.  Sweet and spicy with dried fruit and nuts, it reminds me of Italian Panettone bread without all the butter.  Toasted and drizzled with honey it’s addictive add a satisfying crunch and overall lightness and it’s just plain dangerous to be alone in the house with.  This is the bread you bake for a holiday brunch or for comfort on a gloomy day.

While I’m the first to admit it’s the blind leading the blind I’ve created a pictorial to accompany Peter Reinhart’s text.  Yours may look or behave differently but carry on; you’ll be amazed at what you created.

 

 

Determined to follow the recipe to the letter I weighed the flour.  You can see in the background that I’ve assembled the spices and other ingredients just like Mr. Reinhart says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have the option of using lemon or orange extracts or zest.  I chose orange zest mostly because I love using my microplane grater.

 

 

 

 

My dough was a little sticky and didn’t form a ball so I added flour by the small handful until it behaved.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what my dough looked like after kneading for ten minutes.  Forgot to check if it passed the windowpane test and barreled right into the next step and hand kneaded dried cherries, golden raisins and toasted walnuts.

 

 

 

 

Oiled the bowl and left to rise.  Mr. Reinhart suggests 90 minutes but I had things to do so mine rose for three hours while I ran errands.

 

 

 

 

Here I’ve shaped my boule and let it rise a second time.  Punched the dough down first and then read to leave as much air as possible…sigh.  I compensated by letting this one rise for four hours…things to do and the oven was busy with chicken.

 

 

 

 

The final product glazed and glorious.