June’s Kitchen of the Month was Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms. Elle challenged us to bake Gigi’s Hungarian Almond Roll.
Apparently, my experience making this was different then everyone else’s, and I even made it twice!
For the first bake, I weighed all the ingredients and used the stand mixer for kneading. From the first moment, I could tell that the dough didn’t feel right. Even after a few minutes of hand kneading, it was just different, more like a cookie dough than a bread dough. But, I continued on. Instead of taking one hour for the initial rise, it took 10 hours (and, yes, the yeast was fresh). I let it chill overnight, then, because it was rock solid in the morning, had to let it rest several more hours before it was usable. I decided to bake it without the filling, because I didn’t want to waste either filling or dough.
For the second bake, a week later, I used volume measures for the ingredients, and hand kneaded the dough. This time it took only three hours to rise, but the dough still didn’t feel quite right. I did roll it out, and filled it with almond meal and currants, adding a dash of cinnamon sugar. After an hour or so, I just went ahead and baked it. While it smelled great during the bake, the loaf ended up being dry and crumbly, surprising for such a greasy dough, a very unbread-like result.
I double checked many times to see if I had missed some ingredient, but couldn’t find any errors. I wouldn’t make this again as it was so disappointing. Looks like the other Babes had better success.
If you're willing to give it a try, and hopefully have better results, go to Elle's blog for the recipe.
Check out the other Bread Baking Babes:
- Blog from OUR Kitchen – Elizabeth
- Karen’s Kitchen Stories – Karen
- A Messy Kitchen – Kelly
- My Diverse Kitchen – Aparna
- Bread Experience – Cathy
- Thyme for Cooking - Katie
- My Kitchen in Half Cups – Tanna
- Feeding My Enthusiasms – Elle (Kitchen of the Month)
