Promite and ricotta swirl

I made this over the weekend. I've always wanted to make bread with promite/vegemite/marmite swirls. So here it is.

Recipe:

Day1 -- The Starter (The starter recipe is from The Fresh Loaf)

I made the starter on Friday morning before going to school. By the time it finished proofing for the first time, I was ready go get out of the door.

1 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1/2 cup water

Mix these ingredients together in a bowl. Pour it out onto a clean flat surface and kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes. (I just use a spoon to mix everything together then knead by hands.)

Place the dough back into a greased bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise for an hour or so. It won't rise a lot in that time, but the yeast will begin to wake up.

Punch the dough down, place it back in the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap again and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

Day 2 -- The bread making

I actually made the bread on Sunday so the starter has been in the fridge for two days. I took the starter out from the fridge when I woke up. Leave it on the kitchen bench to let it come back to room temperature. Then went back to bed for another nap. :-)

In a larger bowl, I combined:

2 and 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast
1/4 cup of water
¾ cup of rice milk
50g butter
day 1 starter
100g ricotta, broken up into small pieces, promite

I mixed all of the dry ingredients together. Then I chopped the sponge up into a dozen or so little pieces with a knife and mixed them into the dry ingredients.

Melt butter with rice milk in the microwave for 1 min or until the butter is melted. Add cold water to the milk mixture. Let the mixture cool.

Finally I added the rice milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mixed everything together.

I poured the dough onto a lightly floured surface and kneaded it for approximately 10 minutes. The dough is quite wet but it will slowly come together. Make sure don’t flour the surface too heavily otherwise the dough will absorb too much flour. Then I put the dough back into a greased bowl and allowed it to rise for approximately 90 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a working surface. Press it out to about 20cm by 30cm. Don’t roll the dough as this really destroys all the air pockets from the first proofing. Spread promite evenly over the dough and sprinkle the ricotta pieces evenly on top, and roll it up as rolling a Swiss roll. Close up both ends and put the dough back to the fridge for 9 hours or overnight.

Take the dough out from the fridge one hour before baking to let it get back to room temperature. And glaze with rice milk.

I put an empty metal pan on the bottom shelf of the oven and preheated the oven to 260 degrees.

When the oven was hot and the bread looked risen, I put the bread into the oven on the top shelf and quickly pour a cup of hot water into the pan on the bottom shelf and closed the door. After 5 minutes, I reduced the temperature from 250 to 200 degrees C. I baked it for 30 minutes, then rotated the loaf and bake until done. This may take another 30 to 40 minutes.

I used an instant-read thermometer. When the loaf hit 200 F degrees inside, I pulled it out.

Baking day: Sunday 3 December, 2006

Photography note:
Nikon FM
55 mm Micro Nikkor
Shutter 1/30sec
Aperature 2.8
Superia 200
Lighting is natural light in the kitchen with blinds open

The dof is too shallow. Next time use Superia 400 so that I can have more dof.