Greetings friends of Hive! I'm pleasured to be participating in the contest organized by 
I prepared a vegan Ester bread, baked in Dutch oven and filled with roasted garlic and sage, rosemary and butter.
Ingredients for the dough:
- 500 g of flour
- 100 ml of warm rice milk
- 130 ml of warm water
- 0.5 teaspoons salt
- 20 g of fresh yeast
- 1 teaspoon sugar
Ingredients for the roasted garlic and herb butter:
- 70 g of vegetable butter
- 4 cloves garlic
- a teaspoon of olive oil
- sprig of rosemary
- a few sage leaves
- two pinches of coarse salt
Preparation:
- Crush the yeast and mix it with one tablespoon of flour, sugar and 1 dl of warm water to form a yeast. Let the yeast rise in a warm place.
Sift flour into a large bowl and make a big hole in the middle. Salt and bury the flour along the edge and pour the fermented yeast into the into the hole- we call this volcano. Let it rise a little bit more in a warm place.
- While we wait for the yeast to ferment we can prepare garlic-herb butter. Place 4 garlic cloves on a baking paper (you can use more garlic if you like), sprinkle with olive oil and place it in the oven to 200⁰C, until it gets nicely roasted. That takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Take it out of the oven, sprinkle with salt add, rosemary and sage and place it back in the oven just for a minute. You don't want to burn the herbs, but just release the aroma of it. Take it out of the oven, put it in a blender and add butter. Blend well, until the ingredients are combined and the butter looks all smooth.
- Mix the dough with a wooden spoon, adding warm rice milk. When you form a sticky ball of dough, sprinkle it with flour and mix until it starts separating from the bowl.
Start kneading, first in the bowl, scraping all the dough off the bowl, adding some flour if needed. Transfer the dough to a floured board or a table cloth and knead it with both hands. Knead the dough until it separates nicely from the board and hands. Let it rise again, covered with a kitchen cloth. - Separate the dough into two parts. Roll them in an elongated shape and cover with the garlic-herb butter.
Roll them as roulade, using a kitchen cloth.
Braid both parts of the rolled dough, making the shape of a circle and sprinkle it with a pinch of coarse salt.
- Preheat the oven to 230⁰C and place in an empty tall cast iron tray. When it heats up, take it out and transfer the dough into a hot tray and cover it with a lid. Be very careful when you do that because the tray is really hot!
Place the iron cast tray with a lid on, back into the oven. After 20 minutes, you can safely open the oven and remove the lid. You can leave it in the oven for another 5 or 10 minutes, with reducing the temperature to 200⁰C, if you wish for a crispy crust and nice golden color. But watch out not to burn it. - When baked, carefully take it out of the oven and place the bread to a cooling rack, not to cook it further. Cover it with a slightly wet kitchen cloth, not letting any moisture escape.
Tips:
- Bread is made with love. Yeast is a living organism, be sure to handle it gently, with respect and love. The yeast rises better when we say positive words to it.
- Yeast becomes active only in a dough that is high in gluten, and is most active at temperatures around 30⁰C in a humid and draft-proof room. Lower temperatures inhibit the fermentation of yeast, and temperatures above 54⁰C kill yeast fungi.
- Yeast ferments faster if you feed fungis with a bit of sugar or flour, but don't add too much as the fermentation slows down.
- The more times, the bread is kneaded and risen, the softer and better it is.
- Remember not to leave the yeast or dough for too long when it rises so it won’t fall together.
- Be sure to always cover the dough with a clean cloth or plastic wrap, not to get an undesired dried crust.
- When baking bread, be sure not to open the oven, at least for first 20 minutes.
- With Dutch oven, you will avoid pots of water that are pushed into the oven.
- Be sure not to put any egg in your dough, or cover it with any kind of wash, when baking in Dutch oven.
- The kitchen cloths that I literaly use as a tool to prepare food with, like covering the dough or filtering, I wash them again with only water after they come out of the washing machine. In that way I awoid traces of detrgent in my food.