First Weekly Bread Post of 2010

I doubled up on my bread baking just before Christmas and had enough of our favourite baguettes in the freezer to get us through until this week.  Took the last loaf out yesterday for Moe's breakfast.   So now I'm back to baking on my days off.  Truth be told, I'm glad.  I really enjoy the process and the results.

So yesterday I kneaded up (or at least the Magic Mill did) a double batch of Baguette dough and after the first rise it went into the fridge for slow cold second rise.   It is now sitting on the counter and will be baked later this morning.  It will need about 3 hours to come to room temperature before it can be shaped.

Since it was still early in the day, I decided to knead up another double batch of bread dough.      I found a picture of a pretty braided loaf on another blog - Chef in You.  The recipe  titled  - Zopt - Swiss Braided Bread - is more of a  traditional white bread enriched with milk, butter and eggs.

The dough was very soft and easy to work with.  I made a double batch. Baked one large braided loaf , three large knotted rolls and 4 large kaiser style buns.

Moe  and I shared one of the knotted rolls (afternoon snack) . He hadn't realized that I was baking something different from my norm.   His response after the first bite was "this isn't "YOUR"  bread".   It isn't that he didn't like the bread, just that he much prefers the French bread.

I divided up  the six remaining  rolls/buns and shared them with two of our neighbours.

Moe's breakfast this morning was toast  with homemade Plum jam.

The recipe for this Swiss Braided Loaf  can be found here on Chef In You.