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)
6 comments:
Oh man, having something fail more than once is so frustrating! Sorry this one didn't behave for you.
I think this bake is more pastry than bread. I'm sorry you didn't like it, but I'm not so sure yours was a fail. I let my dough rise for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours and this was after reducing the yeast to almost half of what the original recipe called for. I also added some salt. Mine was crumbly like a cookie. It wasn't that dry though.
Too bad!! Especially because it looks really good in both photos.
My experience with this bread, so far, is completely different from yours. I haven't made the bread at all yet. (Oops....)
Well that's a shame! And so frustrating.
It's a pity that you had issues with the dough. One can't see it in the picture though, because that looks good.
I generally bake with volume measurements. Beyond that I go with my intuition. For this I added a little extra liquid for the dough because I didn't use egg. Also I kneaded till I had a slightly soft elastic dough because it had so much butter and also because it had to be rolled out.
Better luck next time if you decide to make it. Maybe third time could be lucky? :)
How very frustrating! It's bad enough when something doesn't work but when you don't know why it's really aggravating. If it's any consolation it happens to all (most all) of us. lol
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