Imagine yourself walking through New York city and smelling freshly sweet baked bread with cinnamon and vanilla. The smell fills your nose up with the most wonderful aroma. You follow the smell and you find yourself standing behind the bakery window. This beautiful bread is presented for you to take home in a brown paper bag that will be stained by the heat and melted butter. A dough enriched by vegan butter, vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, star anise, cashew nuts, dried apple and pecans. Three times brushed with local vegan butter. You can eat it like it is or with some extra maple syrup on the top or with some berries on the side.

breaded bread recipe:

This recipe is:

• VEGAN
• AFFORDABLE
• IMPRESS YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS AND YOURSELF
• BREAD HEAVEN

For one bread:

Both cups and grams are for you to use 

Ingredients:

3 cups + 3/2 cup + 1 tbsp \  500 grams of good quality bread flour

2/3 cup or 85 grams of coconut blossom sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon, cloves, star anise and cardamom

3/4 of a cup + 1,5 tbsp \ 200 ml whole oat milk

1/3 cup \ 80 grams of vegan butter (weighed while solid)

1 sachet of dried yeast (7 grams)

1/2 cup + 1 tbsp \ 130 grams of vegan thick quark or yoghurt

pinch of salt

zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup \ 75 grams of nut and dried fruit mix (I used a mix of cashews, pecans and dried apple)

MAGICAL METHOD

KITCHEN WITH TIP: before you start. Measure all your ingredients. Then you work quicker and you keep your kitchen nice and tidy.

Grab a big mixing bowl and put all the dry ingredients in. Including the chopped nuts and lemon zest. Heat up your oat milk with the butter in a small saucepan. Keep on stirring until melted. It has to be blood or room temperature. If you are not sure put your fingertip in the liquid and if you can't feel the heat it is more or less the same temperature.

Add your warm milk and butter to the dry ingredients. Also add the quark and mix first with a wooden spoon until you see a dough forming. Then turn out your bowl and keep on kneeding on your kitchen surface.  You can use an electric stand mixer for kneeding but I love to kneed by hand for approx. 12-15 minutes. Until the gluten had time to stretch and develop.  Tuck in the dough and put it back in the mixing bowl. Put over a damp tea towel and let it rise and puff up for 45 min in a warm place.

After 45 minutes of rising, turn out your dough. You don't need extra flour or anything for this beautiful dough, it does not stick and pulls back perfectly. So now the fun part, the braiding. I winged this design but I started to make 6 thick sausages from the dough. Knot them all together at the top. And just like hair braiding, all to the end and tied the ends of the dough in as well.  If there is a raisin or a nut poking through, just push it back.

Grab your damp tea towel again and let the braid rise for an hour. You can skip this step and bake it straight away. You get a more dense and stickier bread but less fluffy. 

Before the bread goes into the oven brush heavy with vegan butter. Brush and moisturize in every little corner. 

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Bake for 20 min. Take the bread out and brush again with butter. Then put it back for another 15 min on 160 degrees Celcius.

TIP: Best eaten within the same day and slightly warm and covered in gorgeous maple syrup.

But also great for french toast bakes