“This recipe makes a delicate, spongy bread that is a delight. It has fine crumb and is excellent for breakfast or tea.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread
Mike and I have been busy enjoying some amazing Minnesota end-of-summer weather, so I am behind in posting. On Tuesday, I made Portuguese Sweet Bread.
Here are the ingredients:
This recipe yields a very sticky dough. I had to add quite a bit of extra flour while kneading, along with using a rubber scraper to get the dough unstuck from my kneading surface. Despite the two packages of yeast, it took two hours of rising time for my dough to double in bulk.
Since I don’t have the 9-inch skillets called for in the recipe to bake round loaves, I used the alternative option and shaped the dough into loaves to fit in my 8 x 4 bread pans. I made the mistake of trying to roll out my dough on an unfloured surface and had to repeat the process of scraping it up. After another hour of rising, my loaves were ready to go in the oven.
After only 25 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees, the loaves had risen quite a bit and were nicely browned.
Just as Beard claims, Portuguese Sweet Bread is a delight. It has a delicate, buttery texture with a lightness from the milk and eggs. Really, you can’t go too far wrong using a recipe with a cup of sugar and a stick of butter.
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