soft raisin bread

"acorns were good, till bread was found"
 ~ francis bacon, english philosopher, statesman (1561-1626)

couldn't agree with you more mr.bacon sir. hehehe...anyone who loves bread deserves to be in my good book. har har!

once again, i took this recipe from pook's blog and as usual her recipes do not disappoint me. this very nice very easy to make bread, is very nice AND very easy. :-p

one thing though be sure to drain the raisins waaaaaay before you start making the bread, because i made the mistake of using them almost immediately and had to endure the task of kneading soggy bread dough. not fun! eventhough most of the hardwork was done by Giant, i still needed to incorporate the raisins into the dough by hand. kalau suruh Giant buat, i'm sure all the raisins will be pureed. we don't want that now, do we? apart from that, i think it's a very nice and very easy (dejavu?) bread to make.

you want the recipe?

i give recipe.

ingredients:
200g bread flour
1 tsp instant dry yeast
2 tbsp sugar
½ tbsp salt
25g unsalted butter, softened
140ml whole milk, i used LF
100g raisins, soaked for a minimum of 2 hours or overnight
2 tbsp dark rum, i used water, of kosh!
egg wash (1 egg + 1 tbsp water)

the how to:
1)  butter or line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

2)  put flour and yeast in a bowl. whisk to combine, then add sugar and salt, whisk again.

3)  pour milk into the bowl and use a large spoon to mix together into a gooey dough.

4)  with a hook attachment, knead the dough using low speed (i used no.2) for about 8-10 minutes. until the dough is elastic and nice. (for those of you who wants to knead the dough yourself, you can go here and there's a step-by-step on how to do it.

5)  with a rolling pin, roll the dough out and then sprinkle the raisins on to the dough, then knead lightly (i did this step).

6)  you can then place the dough into a lightly buttered bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about an hour or until it doubles in size.*

7)  after that, gently take the dough out, take a rolling pin, press and roll the dough into a circle. after that roll the circle into a cylinder.

8)  cut the dough into half and roll both of them into a ball and place them into the loaf pan.

9)  cover the bowl and let it rise for about 30 minutes or until it doubles in size. you can now switch on your oven to 180°C.

10) brush with egg wash before baking, and bake for 15-18 minutes.

*because my dough was really soggy, i had to add in a little bit of flour and the rising time was around 2 hours.

okay, guys. time to get your bread flour out and enjoy this! luck luck!!

recipe source: http://dailydelicious.blogspot.com/