Pull apart bread with candied pomelo

I was intrigued by pull apart bread. Lately I saw some nice ones. Pull apart bread looks like a party bread, a bread for sharing, for eating with friends; a happy bread.

I found a recipe at Yumarama. Paul had made two versions, one with cinnamon sugar and one with lemon zest. He was very content with the zesty one. I still had candied pomelo. We love the combination of sweet bread with the tangy taste of pomelo. The color is fun too.

It’s nice dough to work with. I followed the recipe to the point of the filling. Paul used 226 grams of sugar and this was too much for me. I looked at a few conversion sites and 1 cup of granulated sugar went from 191 grams to 230 grams (?) Still this was so much sugar, I simply couldn’t pour more than about 125 grams. It’s confusing for me, because there are so many cups to work with.

Because the bread pan couldn’t hold all the dough I used a small cake pan and filled this with the remaining stack of dough. The small bread looks like a flower, don’t you think so. As I thought before: pull apart bread is delicious and fun to eat.

This is what I used:

Dough:

445 gr all purpose flour

53 gr sugar

6 gr dry yeast

2 gr salt

56 gr unsalted butter (I used salted)

75 gr milk

56 gr cool water

4 gr vanilla extract

100 gr eggs at room temperature (weight without shell)

Pomelo filling

125 gr granulated sugar (Paul used 226 gr)

50 gr candied pomelo

56 gr unsalted butter (I used salted)

This is what I did:

In a large bowl, combine 350 grams of the flour – save the rest for later! –  with the sugar, yeast and salt; whisk together and set aside.

In a small saucepan, add the milk and butter and heat just until the butter is mostly melted. Take off the heat and stir until all the butter melts. Add the cool water and vanilla extract. Set aside until this milk mixture is between 46°C - 51°C; the cool water should help it get there faster.

Slowly pour the cooled milk mixture into the flour and stir with a spatula or, if using a mixer, mix using the dough hook on low speed.

Add the eggs and mix until the eggs are incorporated into the batter. At this stage it looks like cake batter. Add a tablespoon at a time of the remaining flour until you have sticky but stiffer dough. You might not use all of it.

I left the dough in the mixing bowl and kneaded until smooth. I added some flour until the dough went from sticky to tacky.

Sticky is when the dough sticks to your fingers. Tacky is when your fingers seem to stick to the dough, but when you pull back the dough lets go of your fingers. You don’t want it too dry; wetter is better.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover it and leave to ferment for about 1 hour, until it has almost doubled in volume. You can decide to place the dough in the refrigerator for the night. You need to let it warm for about 30-40 minutes before continuing the next day.

Put the butter for the filling into a small saucepan and slowly heat up until the butter starts to turn brown and smells nutty. Set aside to cool a bit.

In a bowl, mix the sugar with the candied pomelo. Set aside.

Grease and flour a 22 * 10.5 cm (9 in * 5 inch) bread pan and set aside.

Lightly flour the work counter and gently deflate the dough. Shape it into a rectangle about 30 cm * 60 cm (12 in * 24 inch), use a rolling pin. It doesn’t need to be exact. Clean the counter and wipe away any stray flour from around the dough rectangle.

Generously apply a good coating of the now cooled butter to the rolled out dough. Drizzle some out of the pan and spread it; you likely won’t use up all the butter but should end up using most of it; your dough will be very shiny and wet looking.

Spread the sugar and pomelo mix out over the entire sheet of buttered dough. I used a dough cutter to slice the dough into six equal strip lengthwise. The strips will be about 5 cm (2 inch) wide. Carefully lift each strip and stack it on top of the next until you’ve stacked all six of them up. Collect any spilled sugar mix and spread back it out onto the top strip – this is why we brushed away the spare flour earlier.

Cut the stacked strips into six equal pieces so you now have six stacks with six layers, about 5 * 5 cm (2 * 2 inch). This is where I got it wrong; I made three stacks with six layers. 

Take each stack and put them into the greased/floured bread pan. It looks like a pile of old brigs, ready to fall. I didn’t place all the stacks and left some space for expanding of the dough. The extra stack I placed in a small cake pan. Sprinkle the left pomelo and sugar over the dough.

Cover the bread pan with plastic and leave to proof for about 35 minutes or until it’s almost doubled in size.

Pre-heat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Place the pan in the centre of the oven and bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until the tops are golden to nutty brown. Depending on your oven, but if the slices start to get too dark too soon, use a tent of aluminum foil over it. The finished colour should be a deep golden brown. It’s done when the internal temperature is about 90°C-96°C (195°F – 205°F).

Place the pan on a wire rack to cool 20 or so minutes. Then release the loaf from the pan. Leave to cool complete or serve warm. Both suggestions taste great! As you can see, I was almost too late to take a crumb-shot.

I found the recipe at Yumarama 

I send this to YeastSpotting and BYOB