Master Loaf from Healthy Bread in 5 minutes a Day

This morning before I left for work, I started a 4 lb batch of the master loaf from HB in 5 Minutes/Day. I made a small loaf when I got home from work so we could have it with dinner... very yummy steak and cauliflower mash prepared by the Chef of the house (not me... I am the Baker.) The loaf was super yummy - plain, wheaty goodness. I softened a bit of butter and added some agave syrup. The butter was a perfect complement. The girls and hubby ate the entire loaf... except for one piece. It is calling my name!

Pumpkin Pie Brioche Bread Braid

I recently joined the Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day baking group.  The group is for enthusiasts of the book using the same name. I have both the Healthy Bread in 5 and Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and highly recommend both. Since the books arrived, I have made half a dozen recipes with so little effort. We are using homemade bread constantly now - cheap, organic, and wonderfully tasty.

The Baking Group had a Bread Braid (someone compared it to a Quilting Bee for bread makers). The first Bread Braid was for the Pumpkin Pie Brioche. To be honest, this was my least favorite of the recipes I have tried so far. The pumpkin flavor was not intense enough for me. I did double the spices, replaced the allspicce with cardamon, and added toasted pecans. The texture of the bread was great, but the flavor was not worth the calories. I might try it again... if I can work out a way to add more pumpkin flavor. For me, pumpkin quick breads are hard to beat.

The HBin5 recipes make enough dough for several loaves (or other baked goodies). The idea is that you can save the dough in the dough bucket for several days. Since this recipe used eggs, the dough can be used for up to 5 days. I made all of my dough up on Sunday because this week promises to be very busy with Moin turning 40 and all :p.

Here is my pumpkin pie brioche journey in pictures.



The Dough Bucket. He and his brother now live in my fridge so we can have a choice of breads!

Pulling the dough out of the bucket is always fun. I found this dough very wet and sticky compared to the other breads I have made from these books.

We made some donuts - not healthy but a nice Sunday morning treat. My youngest daughter declared that rolling them in sugar+ginger+cinnamon+cardomon+cloves was not their destiny... "What they need is a nice cream cheese or brown butter glaze." She was right as usual.

Our first go at donuts. The kids loved them.

I used the left over donut dough to make a couple mini bundts. They were tasty!

Finished bundts... yes I realized too late that the sugary stuff should have gone in the pan before the dough.

Later in the day we made 4 mini loaves.

Finished mini loaves destined to be given to the neighbors.

Mini loaf

And.. we made a batch of pumpkin buns using the same sugar+spices mixture mentioned above.

We used up the cream cheese glaze from the donuts as well.

And we made another 16 donuts! These were not good the next morning. So I would only make what we would eat in the future.