A Star Bread

Sometimes you need a bread that is a showstopper, but isn't actually too difficult to make. This star-shaped braided bread seems to me to fit that description. Check out the recipe and see if you agree.

It's useful to have a working kitchen scale for this one, although I tend to use my scale for baking as much as possible. Baking is all about the proportions of one ingredient to each of the others, so weighing the ingredients is a sure way to keep the proportions solid. In this recipe it also makes it easy to keep the dough amounts for each of the five star points even so that you end up with a nice shape.

This dough is a classic Anadama Bread, which is a bread with cooked cornmeal, molasses, some whole wheat flour and some regular flour. It has lots of flavor and the dough is easy to work with, which is a must when you are making a shaped bread like this. Best of all, it's delicious! A bonus is that with this recipe you also get a loaf, so you can have the shaped bread for a special occasion and still have slices for toast. It makes great toast!

You start by cooking some cornmeal and water. If you use coarsely ground cornmeal or stone ground whole meal cornmeal, you'll want to cook it until the grains soften, so just keep stirring and be patient.

Never a good idea to add really hot cooked grains to a yeast mixture, so let the mixture cool down, but be sure to add in the butter first. I forgot to do that, so I had to warm up the mixture in the microwave a few seconds so that the butter would mix in well.

Take your time with the kneading, too. Any time that you are going to braid bread dough it helps to have plenty of gluten developed...which is the whole point of kneading as far as I know. This bread is an old New England favorite but in colonial times they had to do all the kneading by hand. We can use a stand mixer, if we desire, to do some of the work.

After the dough rises and it's time to shape it, use your scale and a bench scraper to divide the dough into six pieces that all weight within a couple of grams of each other. You can pinch off a bit from a heavy lump and add it to a light lump of dough if you need to adjust to even them out. Use the same process when you divide each lump into three pieces. The closer in weight that each piece is, the easier it will be to make a nicely shaped star.

When you are braiding the dough for each arm of the star, roll the dough pieces in a tapered long cone shape. You'll gather each pointed tip end of the cone together and braid towards the fatter end. That way the three fatter ends will create a great 'upper arm' for that point of the star. When all five are done, you place them so that those fat ends barely touch and each point is pointing out; it becomes a star shape. The final part is to roll the sixth piece of dough into a long snake, with the whole length the same thickness. Once that is formed in a spiral over the center, it ties all five arms together. Here is a photo of mine at that point. I shaped mine on a 12-inch pizza pan, which worked well. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the finished star, but it was a bit puffier and much browner but otherwise looked the same.

Anadama Bread and Star
Star shaping from Festive Baking by Sarah Kelly Iaia
makes two loaves or one loaf and one big star

1/2 cup regular corn meal
2 cups water, divided
1/3 cup molasses
6 tablespoons butter, softened,
1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 1/2 cups (about) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
oil for greasing
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water for egg wash

In a bowl, whisk together the cornmeal and 1 cup of the cold water. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, bring another cup of water to a boil. Add cornmeal mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is very thick, about 3 - 4 minutes. Stir in the molasses and the butter.
Add the whole wheat flour and stir until all is combined. Transfer mixture to bowl of an electric stand mixer and cool to tepid. (Or transfer to a mixing bowl large enough to mix the dough by hand and then knead in the rest of the flour.)

Add the 1 cup sourdough starter to the mixing bowl with the tepid cornmeal mixture. Mix on low speed with dough-hook attachment ( or a wooden spoon) for several seconds. With dough hook in place on the stand mixer add flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing for several seconds after each addition. Sprinkle in the salt, and continue mixing until dough completely comes away from sides of bowl, about 7 minutes.

Lightly oil a bowl. Form dough into a ball and place it in the bowl. Oil a sheet of plastic wrap and loosely cover dough. Allow dough to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until it has doubled in size. (At this point I punched the dough down, recovered it, and put it in the fridge overnight. The next day I let the dough warm up and then did the shaping.)

Lightly grease 1- 9 x 4 inch loaf pan. Line a sheet pan with silicon mat or parchment for the star. Press down dough and divide it into 2 equal pieces. Shape one piece loosely into a loaf and place in the prepared pan pan. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and allow to rise for 30 minutes, or until loaf has doubled.

For star, take second half of dough (all the dough remaining) and divide it into six equal pieces (using a scale really helps with getting the pieces about the same size). Set one piece aside. Each of the other five pieces is used to make one of the star 'arms'.



Take one of the pieces and divide it into three equal pieces. Roll each of those three pieces into a rope about 8 inches long, with a taper at one end. Join the three ropes at the tapered end and braid the ropes. Repeat with each of the next 4 pieces.

Place the braided pieces on the prepared baking sheet with the tapered end pointing out, to shape a five-point star. The ends at the middle should touch and so pinch them together.

Take the last piece of dough and roll into a long rope, about 20 inches long. Starting at the center of the star, wind the rope around in a spiral over the center of the star. Tuck the end under the spiral.

Cover the star with oiled plastic wrap and set aside to rise, until doubled in bulk. When almost to that point, preheat the oven.

When oven is fully preheated, brush the star and the loaf with a wash of 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water. Make sure that the wash goes into the crevices of the star. Slash the top of the loaf.

Bake in preheated 350 degrees F oven. Bake loaves for 35 minutes to 1 hour, or until bread is dark golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Star may take a shorter baking time than the loaf. That's OK.

Allow bread to cool in pans for 5 minutes, then turn out onto wire cooling rack. Serve warm if possible.


This bread is mellow and soft, barely sweet from the molasses and makes really good toast.

Buddies Bake Anadama Bread

Not sure what happened, but I completely forgot to do a round-up post for the Anadama Bread. So sorry dear Buddies! Perhaps this being my first post for 2016 will make it more acceptable.

We had at least two lovely breads baked by our Buddies Kelly of A Messy Kitchen and Carola of Sweet and That's It.   I thought there was a third one, but can't find any e-mails. Many thanks to each of your for baking with the Bread Baking Babes!

Kelly of A Messy Kitchen  found this month's bread a stroll down memory lane since she had made the bread in high school. She says, "For my loaf, I used a blend of flours, all purpose, spelt, and einkorn.  Because spelt and einkorn don't absorb liquid like regular flour, I ended up having to add a lot more, between ¾ and 1 cup of regular flour (to boost the gluten).  I still left the dough on the sticky side though because too much einkorn can give you a dry or dense loaf.  I must have hit it right because I got neither of those.  The loaf was hearty, for certain, but not heavy and still nicely moist.  I only figured out today that I used double the sugar as the original post, because I looked at another babe's post first which did the same.  Maybe that was why my loaf took so long to rise, the sugar inhibits the yeast.  I might use less next time but it was really good as it turned out!  And I still got fantastic oven spring."

Carola of Sweet and That's It posted on our Facebook page and not on her blog, but her Anadama bread was gorgeous, with a lovely pattern made using the seeds on top. She found that not all cornmeal is created equal but I hope she will try again to make this bread, even using the fascinating pan she tried.

I think a lot of the Babes had a good time with the Anadama bread and the variety of seeds was stunning. The Bread Baking Babes will be posting the January recipe on Jan. 16th. It's a different one, so do check back then.

The Babes And An Old New England Bread

This month I have the honor of being the Kitchen of the Month and have asked my fellow Bread Baking Babes to gather around the kitchen table and to have fun with Anadama Bread, an old New England favorite. Sweetie enjoys this bread because of the molasses and I enjoy the seeds and the fact that it makes great toast. It has corn meal in it for body and mine was a fairly compact bread which rose well enough as it was proofing, but didn't have much oven spring either time I made it. You can have fun with this bread by changing out the seeds. The first time I made it I didn't have many seeds on hand, so I used mostly flax and poppy seeds. 

The second time I used those, but also used sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, plus I used regular flour and just a bit of millet flour. I'm pretty sure that traditional Anadama Bread doesn't have much in the way of seeds, so this is a good recipe to have fun with, knowing that you are giving and old New England bread a new way of being.

Anadama bread is an old time bread, baked at least since 1850. This recipe is from the March 2015 Bon Appetit magazine.
 
 I tried it out in a semi-gluten free version, replacing 1/2 cup of the wheat flour with buckwheat flour and the King Arthur Flours gluten free flour mix so I could actually try a slice and not suffer for it. I also used a non-dairy butter substitute instead of the butter. For seeds I used 3 tablespoons whole brown flax seeds and 4 teaspoons poppy seeds.  I baked it in a long, thin bread pan, which is usually good for gluten free baking, so it made a long, narrow loaf. I think a regular sized loaf pan would make nicer bread for sandwiches. 

This dough made a pretty dense loaf with wonderful flavor and fragrance. I would recommend using regular flour (unbleached or whole wheat), real butter and whichever seed mixture you like, staying pretty close to the same seed proportions. Do allow time for the three risings.
 
No one really knows how this bread got its name. Wikipedia says, "An apocryphal story told about the origin of the bread goes like this: Every day a local worker would find cornmeal mush in his tin lunch pail, despite asking his wife for an occasional piece of bread. One day, because of weather or other circumstances, he came home just prior to lunch time. His wife, Anna, was out. He sat down and opened his lunch box to find the usual cornmeal mush. He sighed and said, "Anna, damn her," as he resolutely reached for the flour, molasses and yeast which he added to the cornmeal mush. His resulting bread became a local favourite."
 
 King Arthur Flour has this explanation: "There are many versions of how this bread came into being. They're all similar, but each varies slightly. The general consensus is that a New England woman named Anna provoked her husband — some say through laziness, others say from baking the same bread daily, or for not finishing her bread-baking. The husband either threw a bag of cornmeal at her and missed, but spilled it into the dough; or he grabbed cornmeal instead of flour and tried to finish her bread. He muttered, "Anna, damn her!"
 
So you can freely swear while making this bread (it's tradition, right?), have some wine while it rises and rises again...and again, and enjoy it as the weather grows ever colder.

Be sure to visit the other Babes sites to see what their version is and since this is a wonderful bread to go with a pot of hot soup, there is likely to be a good day to make it between now and December 29th. Make the bread, send me an e-mail with a photo and a note about your experience with it, and I'll send you a Buddy badge created by our talented Babe Lien. My e-mail is elle dot lachman at gmail dot com. Looking forward to seeing your beautiful, seedy Anadama Bread.

Anadama Bread - Makes one loaf

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for the pan
1 - 1/4 oz. envelope active dry yeast (about 2 1/4 tsp.)
1 cup stone ground medium cornmeal
1/4 cup mild-flavored molasses
2 tablespoons help seeds or white sesame seeds
1 tablespoon nigella seeds or black sesame seeds
2 tsp. golden flaxseed
2 tsp. brown flaxseed
2 tsp. poppy seeds
1 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading, etc.
1 large egg, beaten to blend
Salted butter, for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly butter an 8" x 4" loaf pan and line with parchment paper, leaving a generous overhang. (I skipped the parchment and baked the bread in a narrower and longer pan.)

Place yeast in a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Add 1 cup warm water; stir to dissolve the yeast. Add the cornmeal, molasses, help seeds, nigella seeds, golden and brown flax seeds, poppy seeds and salt. Stir to combine using a wooden spoon. Continue stirring with the wooden spoon or use the dough hook if using the stand mixer. Add 2 cups of flour and 2 tablespoons of butter and mix until no dry spots remain.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, 10-15 minutes OR mix in stand mixer on medium speed 8-10 minutes.

Lightly butter a medium bowl. Transfer dough to bowl and turn to coat. (Elizabeth might skip the butter part.) Cover with plastic wrap or shower cap and let rise in warm, draft-free spot until almost doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough to deflate; cover. Let rise again until about doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat into and 8' x 4' rectangle. Starting at the short side furthest from you, roll up dough, pinching the seam as you go to create a tight roll. Pinch seam to close and tuck ends under, pinching to seal. Place seam side down in the prepared loaf pan. Cover with plastic and let dough rise. Uncover before it crests the top of the pan and wait for it to spring back slightly when pressed, about 1 hour.

Brush top of dough with egg. Bake, rotating halfway through, until bread is baked through and the top is a deep golden brown, 45-50 minutes. Let cool slightly in the pan on a wire rack before turning out. Let cool on the rack before slicing (if you can wait that long). Serve with salted butter.

Bread can be made 5 days ahead. Store tightly wrapped at room temperature.