Rainbow Swirl Classic Bread – Home baker’s Challenge 4

First of all a big thanks to +Priya Suresh  aks  who evolved this lovely group “Home baker’s challenge” and also thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity to host this months challenge. when i was thinking of what should i challenge i was much excited to ahead with bread challenge as we had already completed with pizza,cake and cookies  in our before challenges. This was an nice opportunity for me to try my to list and i did so .

I challenged 4 breads for this month:

1. Rainbow swirl classic bread.
2. Fresh strawberry chocolate stuffed pull apart/ Monkey bread.
3. Chocolate marble Asian bread (roux method) .
4. Anadama Bread.

They all are yummy breads and where in my to do list for long time :). When i challenged this HBC member’s where so encouraging and took this as an wonderful opportunity to bring out their wonderful baking skills and made these bread 🙂

Now Today am going ahead with my first  bread which is rainbow 🙂 Am having rainbow mania now a day’s i made rainbow panna cotta for priya aks B’day and today am here with another rainbow special bread 🙂  Kids will love it as the color attracts them a lot but to make this you have to use good quality organic food color’s which might not to much harm to our health. I will come up with an healthier version by using natural colors like fruits , or veggie some time  once i do some experiments and if it turns out good. 

This was all my time favourite attractive and colorful  bread which was in my to do list for so long and wanted to this as a part of this month’s HBC challenge.My kiddo just loved to have this bread as it looks too very attractive. Lets move on to the recipe

Ingredients

2 and 1/2 cups warm water (90 F to 100 F)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 package active dry yeast ( 2 1/2 tsp)
7- cups bread flour (more or less) / all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon salt
4 Tablespoons room temperature butter

Note : I used only half the dough to make rainbow cake. other half i used for pull apart which i will be sharing shortly.

Bread dough:

• In bowl take 2 1/2 cups of warm water at 90 F . Add 1 tbsp sugar and 1 package of yeast stir them and let them sit for 15- 30 mins till they form frothy bubbles on top.
• Add 4 cups of flour mix it with a wooden spoon and let it sit for 10 mins.
• After 10 min mix it with wooden spoon and add another 1 cup of flour mix well also add 1 tbsp of salt.

• Now its time to use our faithful hands .
• Add one cup at time i.e remaining 3 1/2 cups of flour and Mix the dough well.
• Add 4 tbsp of soft room temperature butter in the dough and incorporate them by kneading well for 5 – 6 mins. After 5-6 mins of knead it becomes nice and elastic.
• Now grease a bowl and and keep the dough covered with a cling wrap for first proving for about 30 mins.
• After 30 mins the dough is nicely raised punch it and give it a knead . Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.

• Divide dough into 6 or 7 equal pieces place each piece in a small bowl and cover with a tea towel.
• Remove one piece from a bowl and place it on a plastic cutting board (or any surface you’re willing to cover with food coloring). Add several drops of food coloring (I’d start with 10 drops and keep adding as you go).
• Using gloves to prevent your hands from getting dyed, begin to knead the food coloring into the dough, adding more food coloring until it is fully incorporated. This takes some time; just be patient and it will come together!
• Shape dough into a ball and return to its bowl. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough, dye each dough with different color (red + blue makes purple), being sure to wash your hands/gloves and your work surface between each color.

How to proceed

• Cover bowls with a tea towel or plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
• When dough is risen, punch down all the colourful doughs. Remove red dough and roll out on a lightly floured surface into an 8-by-4-inch rectangle. Roll out yellow piece of dough into an 8-by-4-inch rectangle and place directly on top of red dough. Repeat with green, then blue, then purple doughs until you have a stack of 8-by-4-inch rectangles.
• Roll up dough tightly from the short end into a loaf. Place loaf in a lightly greased 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
• Heat oven to 375- 400°F. Uncover dough and bake until browned on top and a thermometer inserted in the bottom center reads 190°, about 30 minutes or until the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.
• I kept it to cool for about 2 hours to get the clean cut.

Tips:

• While you dye if you feel the dough is difficult to handle then you can dust some flour and incorporate the colors to the dough.
• I used liquid dye food color which would be more convenient to incorporate the colors in dough. You can also use food color gel.
• Dyeing may take little time and you have to knead the dough till dough is fully dyed and no part of dough is un- colored it takes some time.
• If don’t want dye colors you can skip the colors and bake a white bread with the dough omitting the colors.