Who says you can't improvise in baking?

[rachelmanija]

A Bread Improvisation in 5 Photos

I used my favorite peasant bread recipe to create two loaves, one sweet with black sesame paste and one savory with chopped Chinese sausage and hoisin sauce. I added both flavorings before the first prove. Behold my elegant marbled dough!



Then I punched them down and added some decorations. Delicious bread-to-be, or Cthulu at a nine-year-old girl's birthday party?



Ready... Set... BAAAAAAAKE! Isn't the sausage loaf gorgeous?



The sausage loaf had a wonderful crisp crust, but the sesame loaf had a fantastic pull-apart texture.



And eat!



Verdict: Black sesame is good and the texture is excellent, but just making regular bread and spreading sesame on it is a better sesame delivery system.

Chinese sausage bread is GREAT. I had to pop it back in the oven because it didn't bake fully through, but once it did, the taste is phenomenal. I added a little hoisin to the dough and probably could have added more (and possibly put in a little extra flour to compensate.) Also maybe chopped the sausage finer.

Alas, I belatedly realized that I should not leave meat out overnight so I had to stick in in the fridge. So much for the crisp crust! I'm sure it will be great toasted up though.

Comments

[yhlee]

Is the peasant bread recipe this one? We love Chinese sausage and I've a mind to try this at home!

[rachelmanija]

Yes! I added about a teaspoon of hoisin sauce to the half portion of the dough marked for the sausages. In retrospect I would double that, chop the sausage a bit finer, and add about five minutes to the bake time. I used one sausage for the loaf.

[yhlee]

Thanks for the recipe notes, Rachel! I'll report back when I try this, although given my ineptitude in the kitchen it could be HILARIOUS.

I'm pretty sure if I started baking bread my family would HORK IT DOWN INSTANTLY. It was actually a joke among our college friends that JOE LOVES BREAD (they pooled funds for a bread machine for our wedding gift, since at the time Joe and I married, everyone was basically a broke grad student) and Ara takes after her father in that regard. :)

[minoanmiss]

These look great!

Bread is easier to improvise in, I think, as long as nothing kills the yeast. But any baking can be improvised in as long as one knows what one's doing. (I admit it hurts my soul when people take a chocolate chip cookie recipe and try to swap in agave syrup and canola oil for sugar and butter without re-enginnering the recipe's other quantities.)

[rachelmanija]

Yuck.

So, if I add in more hoisin sauce should I also add in a bit more flour?

[minoanmiss]

TBH, see how the dough feels. You might need more flour, but it's better to under-flour than over-flour, so I advise caution.

[pameladean]

Wow, those are beautiful and look delectable. I so often find that very very tasty improvisations look quite scary that I wanted to remark on the gorgeousness of both breads. P.

[movingfinger]

Those look great!

[watersword]

Well, I do need to use up flour before Passover....

[nenya_kanadka]

Om nom NOM.

[monanotlisa]

Very impressed with the texture!