Bread Machine (193 page)

Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 350ºF, with a rack set on the lower third position.

Bake the
kulich
until golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about 35 to 40 minutes. If the top browns too quickly, cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil. Immediately remove the baked loaf from the mold by sliding it out onto a rack. Brush the warm top with some melted butter and dust with confectioners’ sugar or sprinkle with raw or pearl sugar. Cool completely and serve at room temperature. Top with a fresh rose if you like. If made ahead, wrap the plain bread airtight and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw in the wrappings and rewarm in a 350ºF oven for 20 minutes, then decorate.

Two Flavorful Ways to Plump Dried Fruit

Rum Raisins

Rum raisins are so simple to prepare and add so much dimension to holiday sweet breads. Drained, they can be an ingredient in breads, bread puddings, muffins, and ice creams (just fold into slightly softened vanilla ice cream and refreeze). In place of the raisins, you can use dried cherries or dried cranberries.

2 cups dark or muscat raisins

2 cups dark rum

Place the raisins in a spring-top jar. Cover with the rum. Replace the jar cover tightly and let the raisins stand at room temperature overnight if using the next day. For longer storage, keep in the refrigerator. Raisins will be soft and plump. Each time you remove some raisins to use, make sure the remaining raisins are still covered with rum. Refrigerated, these keep indefinitely.

Vanilla Raisins

You can use these raisins in any recipe that calls for regular raisins. They are ethereal!

1 cup dark raisins

1 cup golden raisins

¹
/
₄
cup vanilla extract, heated to warm in the microwave

Place the raisins in a small bowl and toss them with the warm vanilla extract. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 3 hours to overnight. The raisins will be ready to use. For longer storage, place raisins in the refrigerator.

The Right Ingredient: Vanilla

Vanilla extract is as familiar to the home baker as chocolate. It is the most widely used spice, with a comforting perfume and delicate floral flavor. It is an extract from a flowering tropical orchid vine with edible fruit pods indigenous to Mexico, also grown in Indonesia, Tahiti, the Seychelles, and Madagascar in the Bourbon Islands.

The long, green vanilla bean pod is fermented, or cured, in the sun in a baking and sweating process for several weeks until it shrivels up. This develops the vanillin, the primary flavor of vanilla, that is encased within the skinlike walls of the pod. The word vanilla comes from the Spanish word
vainilla
, meaning “small scabbard,” and
vaina
, or “string bean,” which is what the pod looks like, especially when the pods are in a bunch. It has been used by apothecaries in a syrupy tincture as a stomach calmative, and shows up in perfumes (remember Shalimar by Guerlain?), candles, tobacco, and tea (my favorite is a small tin from France with black tea infused with vanilla), in addition to being used as a culinary spice.

In bread machine baking, you can use a vanilla extract, powdered vanilla, or whole beans. I use all types of vanilla. It gives great character to breads, and works well with many other accent flavors, like coffee, cocoa, sweet spices, raisins, other extracts such as almond, lemon, or orange, and spirits such as rum or brandy. It is wonderful with corn.

Vanilla Extract

Vanilla extract, in varying qualities, is the most readily available form of vanilla for the home baker. Pure amber-colored liquid extracts, made from beans, alcohol, and water in a cold-percolated method, are available in small bottles from supermarkets, specialty food stores, and by mail order. I asked food writer and vanilla expert Patricia Rain which was the best extract to use in baking. She said that the level of quality has to do with the alcohol content of the extract. You want to use a vanilla with 35 to 44 percent alcohol, which will preserve the 250 fragrance and flavor components inherent in every bean. Brands like Cook’s, Nielsen-Massey (available through Williams-Sonoma), Spice Islands, and Penzeys Spice House are good choices.

Extract is also the strongest pure flavoring of vanilla available to the home baker, although there are now some extracts labeled double strength or “two fold,” which need to be used sparingly (use half as much as regular vanilla). While extract smells alcoholic if you sniff it in the bottle, the alcohol’s flavor evaporates in the heat of the oven, leaving only the vanilla flavor behind. Extract has a watery consistency; it is never thick. One teaspoon of extract is sufficient to flavor a pound of bread dough. Too much vanilla will make a loaf taste harsh.

Vanilla extract lasts three years in a tightly capped bottle stored in a cool, dry place away from light or in the refrigerator. I store pieces of vanilla bean in my extract. The flavor of imitation extracts, which are made from a wood pulp by-product of the paper industry and flavored with a coal tar derivative, just cannot compare to true extract.

Bottles labeled only “vanilla extract” are a blend of different types and grades of vanilla. Extracts from single growing regions will be labeled Bourbon, Mexican, or Tahitian. Madagascar Bourbon vanilla is the most affordable and most common; it has a strong, almost musky, yet classic vanilla aroma that I like with nuts, in cinnamon rolls, and in icings. The best Mexican extract is rare and expensive, but it is available in the United States. What you buy in those cheap liter bottles in the
mercado
are usually synthetic (they will contain 2 percent or less alcohol), possibly with toxic coumarin as a booster, so pass on the Mexican vanilla unless you know what you’re looking for. High-end Tahitian extract is showing up more often on the market. It is expensive, has a floral, licorice-like aroma, and is considered a gourmet delicacy, even by professional bakers. It is especially nice in doughs with fresh and dried fruits.

Some bakers make their own blend of extracts. There are many instructions, too, for making your own vanilla extract by placing the beans in brandy or vodka. I have never had great luck with this, as it takes
lots
of beans (one to three are just not enough) to get anywhere near the intense flavor of a premium vanilla extract.

Vanilla Powder

Powdered vanilla, which is very popular in Europe, is made by spraying ribbons of vanilla onto sheets of dextrose in radiant ovens. It is creamy white instead of the brown color associated with the extract and bean. It is available from Nielsen-Massey (this brand has no sugar), McCormick, and Cook’s in 2-ounce jars (in many supermarkets). The powder may end up in one big, dry lump in the jar; if it does, just crumble off what you need. Long used in cake mixes, vanilla powder is also nice in streusel crumb toppings, in doughs along with vanilla extract, in all-white flour sweet doughs, and with chocolate. Use measure for measure when substituting powder for extract.

Whole Vanilla Beans

Whole beans are definitely more time-consuming to use than vanilla extract, but they give the purest vanilla flavor without the alcohol. Different beans will give different flavors to your breads. Choose from Mexican (the most brittle and shriveled), Madagascar or Bourbon (long and slender; if these have reflective crystals on them, use them—they have a high concentration of vanillin), Indonesian, and Tahitian (the most expensive, the plumpest, and most moist). If a vanilla bean is very moist, I keep it in a plastic freezer bag in the freezer to prevent mildew. Otherwise, store sleek, flexible beans in plastic or in a glass jar in a cool, dark place. If your bean is brittle, soak it in warm water or milk until pliable before splitting. You can use a bean a few times, wiping it dry after use. Beans should smell like vanilla; never use a bean that smells off or bad.

To use a vanilla bean to flavor a bread machine bread, cut the bean in half, then split it in half again lengthwise using a small knife. Scrape the seeds into the milk or other liquid you are using in the recipe, then throw in the oil-rich skin (that is where all the flavor is). Let the liquid steep for 10 minutes before removing the bean, and the liquid is ready to be added to the bread machine. I like the flecks that appear in a bread from the seeds; they remind me of eating real vanilla ice cream when I was a kid.

You can also use vanilla beans to add their flavors to sugars or coffee. I place pieces of vanilla bean (a single bean chopped into 4 or 5 pieces) in a spring-top jar and cover them with 3 to 4 cups of granulated or confectioners’ sugar. The sugar takes on a vanilla flavor as it sits in the jar. The beans remain potent for about six months, and you can just keep adding more sugar to cover. Use vanilla sugar, in addition to the extract called for, in place of the regular sugar in a sweet bread or icing. Vanilla confectioners’ sugar is great for dusting a fresh loaf of sweet or holiday bread. Pieces of vanilla bean can be added to the drip basket with the ground coffee to brew up a vanilla-infused pot. Or you can use the same method as with the sugar—bury pieces of a vanilla bean in your stored coffee beans, and they will take on the vanilla flavor.

Ground Vanilla Beans

Whole vanilla beans can be finely ground and dried into powder, giving a distinct and strong vanilla flavor. Ground beans are now available from Nielsen-Massey and Cook’s. Use a pinch in bread doughs. You will be able to see the vanilla flecks in the finished loaf. I now use this type of vanilla.

Patricia Rain gave me a technique for how to grind whole beans, so you can make your own. This is a good way to use up beans that have been used three or four times already. Place the beans on a clean baking sheet and dry them in a 200ºF oven for 10 minutes just to toast. You can do this in a skillet, but I like the oven method better. Remove from the oven and cool before breaking into pieces and grinding in a coffee grinder. The entire bean is edible. Store in a plastic container or in a glass jar in a cool, dark place.

PORTUGUESE SWEET BREAD

T
his is a buttery Portuguese holiday bread known as
Pão Doce,
a descendant of the traditional festival bread native to mainland Portugal and the Azores known as
Folar da Páscoa.
The large Portuguese population in New England has brought so much fame to this ethnic bread, though, that Portuguese sweet bread is now almost synonymous with New England. Often the loaf has a whole colored egg, a symbol of the Resurrection, set into its top, covered with a cross of dough. The bread has subtle hints of lemon and vanilla and is quite sweet. It is so good toasted and served with jam or lemon curd for breakfast. But it is just as good with a sweet wine for dessert.