"Braided" Nutella Bread!

NUTELLA!  Yes, everyone's favorite hazelnut spread, right?  I'm sure you've pinned at least 4 or 5 pins that have something to do with Nutella.  If you haven't, this post may not be for you.

Maybe you've seen it and skipped over it because it looked difficult to make, or maybe it's sitting on your food board.  I know many of you have thought that this would be divine if you could figure out how to make it.  I was intimidated, I won't lie.  I haven't really used yeast before, so I enlisted the help of a couple family friends when I tested this recipe.  :)

The pin should take you to a website called Good Home Design, but there be careful.  There are a lot of pins for this particular recipe that are incorrectly linked!  Even though I tried fixing the link on the pin on my board, Pinterest won't allow you to go to the website.  :(  

Good Home Design is the correct originating website though. 

Here are the ingredients and instructions for the Braided Nutella Bread from the website:

• two and a half cups of all purpose flour;
• a half of teaspoon of yeast;
• a cup of water;
• a teaspoon of salt;
• a tablespoon of sugar;
• some Nutella;
• cornmeal;
• one egg;

Start by dissolving yeast with a quarter of a cup filled water, poured into a small bowl. Take another bowl, and while you let the yeast rest for 10 minutes, mix in – with the use of a stand mixer – the appropriate amount of flour, salt, and sugar. Add the yeast and mix at a low speed. Smoothly turn the speed to medium and keep turning for 7 minutes.

Get another bowl and lightly oil it and place the dough you recently made in there. Cover it with a plastic wrap and in about an hour of sitting in a warm place it will double in size.

Roll some of the dough in order to make a circle. Careful you leave enough because you’ll have to make another circle in a few minutes. Take the Nutella (be careful to take it out the fridge for a while so it would be easy to spread; you could also microwave it for 30 seconds to be sure) and pour an even layer on the surface, but leaving half an inch of margin of dough all around.

The next step is to place another roll off dough (Nutella free) on top. Afterward, place it on a parchment-lined or silicon-lined baking sheet. It’s advised you sprinkle the sheet beforehand with cornmeal. Use a knife to cut the dough down the middle, but keeping one end intact. Look at the image for guideline.

By turning the cut side toward the top, twist the ends of the dough overtop each other. Do this for every cut you made. For the next 20 minutes, let your future bread sit in a dry place, but make sure you cover it with plastic wrap. In the meantime, prepare the oven. Set it to 350°F. Before placing the dough in, brush it with some egg wash. Then, bake at this temperature for about 20 minutes. To get that lightly brown look and taste on top, raise to 425°F and bake for another 5-7 minutes. It’s done! Let it cool before serving.

If that doesn't sound intimidating to you, you're braver or more confident that I was when I first read the instructions!

Before we attempted to make the bread, we read through the comments.  I find that when I test recipes, I check to see if any readers, much like yourself, have tried the recipe and what they say about it.  One of the biggest issues we noticed was that the amount of yeast the recipe calls for is not enough.  We were definitely glad that we read the comments because 1/2 tsp of yeast is definitely not enough!!  So there, we give you change #1, use the entire packet of yeast.  We dissolved that in 1/4 cup of warm water, as stated in the directions.  When it came time to add the dissolved yeast to the flour mixture, we then added 3/4 cup water to the mixture (change #2).  When we placed it in another bowl to allow it to rise, we let about 2 hours to pass.  This is only because we forgot about it since we forgot to set a timer.  :p

When it is time to take the dough and roll it out, one thing they do not mention is that you will need more flour.  If you're as inexperienced as I am with dough, you will need to flour your space so that the dough will be manageable.  Change #3- flour your rolling surface!

Stephanie working with the dough

 

Jayson stepped in to roll out the dough and shape it.  Since we were experimenting, we didn't take the time to get a bowl to cut it out to be a circle.  

Stephanie spreading out the Nutella.  I don't know about you, but we do not 

refrigerate ours, especially since the container says not to!

 Jayson cutting out slices in the dough

Teamwork!

Stephanie twisting the dough.  This made us want to look for a pin that actually calls 

for braiding the bread so that it lives up to the name :)

 Stephanie applying the egg wash

The finished product!

The verdict: It was good, but definitely need to tweak it a bit more.  The dough wasn't as flaky as we wanted it and we thought it could be sweeter.  The husband described it as "pretzel dough with Nutella."  We're definitely going to experiment with this more and once we perfect it, I will definitely share it!  If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share!

Cheers!

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Source: thenibble.com via G on Pinterest

Does anyone else get a bit excited when they see ripe bananas on the counter?  I know I do, and as soon as I saw that I had 3 ripe ones that it meant two words: banana bread!  I'm so glad I'm able to post this recipe tonight! It almost didn't happen because 1. I didn't think we had enough honey and 2. I originally thought I read the recipe called for whole milk when it calls for whole milk yogurt, in other words whole fat yogurt.  Thankfully, my husband saved me and my urge to bake tonight and picked up some yogurt after work. 

I am able to bring to you my first baking pin tonight!  When I pinned it a few days ago, the description simply said "The Best" Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Recipe.  Naturally, I was intrigued, especially after reading the recipe which called for half the amount of flour I was used to, one less egg, and no white sugar at all compared to the regular recipe I'm used to (sans chocolate chips).  I knew I'd make this my first baking pin of the year!

I gathered up my ingredients and measured them out so I'd be ready for each new step since the recipe suggests that you have them readily available to mix.  I don't think I've ever really used my prep bowls to bake before, so I pulled them out.  Felt all fancy using them as I followed along the recipe. :)  I didn't have any baby bananas, just 3 normal sized bananas.  We don't have them in grocery stores here in California unless you go to the Asian markets, so don't feel like you can't use this recipe if you don't have any kind of access to baby bananas.  It's fine if you don't have a sifter, you can use a strainer or a fork or wire whisk for combing the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.  Don't fret if you don't have a stand mixer, I used a hand mixer, and if you don't have that, don't worry!  If you read the last sentence of step 3 in the directions , you can hand mix everything as well!  A piece of information he probably should've mentioned at the beginning. :)



I timed each time I mixed as the directions stated.  When it came to incorporating the flour mixture in with the wet mixture, I poured in the flour mixture when I counted on 1, 3, 5, and 7, (since it wants you to only mix this part for 10 seconds) and then mixed two more seconds so that the flour couldn't be seen anymore.  I added the yogurt and mixed with the hand mixer on the lowest setting, and then switched out to a spatula to fold in the chocolate chips.  This is what my mix looked like:

Since you're only mixing in the yogurt for 5 seconds, you should still see some strips of white in the mixture.  If you didn't grease/butter your bread pan before you started, don't forget to do it before you pour the mixture in your pan!  The mixture filled up the pan!

I set my loaf in the oven for 50 minutes--at 45 minutes, I didn't get a clean toothpick.  After 50 minutes I pulled the loaf out to cool.  If you get a toothpick that is a little dirty when testing the middle of the loaf, you should be fine since you might've hit a banana chunk.  Let the bread cool down for at least 5-10 minutes before you think about cutting into it to taste!  In our house, we keep our loafs in the bread pan so our furry kids (dog and cat) don't try and knock it down from the counter top to eat it-serious!

My loaf definitely cooked faster around the top and edges (as expected) and the color came out a bit darker than what I'm used to.  It wasn't burned at all, I'm thinking it's due to the use of brown sugar vs using regular.  The inside is definitely moist, but I wouldn't say it was particularly fluffy.  The very center didn't cook all the way unfortunately.  It wasn't "dough" but it was beyond a moist consistency.  I recommend splitting up the mix into two bread pans, which might help with the very center part of the loaf.  I'll definitely be trying this recipe again that way and will be sure to update with that attempt.

The verdict: It is tasty, but not "the best" chocolate chip banana bread we've ever had.  Maybe we should try the baby bananas?  My husband and kids thought it was tasty, but probably because of the chocolate chips more than anything else.  I really wish they had comments turned on for this recipe to see what other readers thought.

Maybe you'll have a better outcome than we did!