Monday, March 9, 2009

Blueberry and Lemon Goodness

I've been digging deeper into Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This weekend I tried the lemon blueberry wreath recipe that is made with the brioche dough. Wow! Brioche dough merits the fancy french pronunciation of brioche...shhhhh. The full batch contains three sticks (yes, that's 3) of butter and eight eggs. The color of the dough and the subsequent bread truly reflects all of the yolks that have been happily included in the mixture. I'd love to try it again with the eggs from my own future chickens... or at least from someone else's free range ladies.

The recipe includes the directions to make your own lemon curd, but I used some from a jar. It was on hand and I've made lemon curd before, so I remembered how labor intensive it can be. You roll out the dough into a large rectangle, topping it with the lemon curd. I used fresh blueberries to spread out over the lemony goodness, before rolling it up into a log and pinching it together to form a wreath. Once wreath shaped, you make slices every 1 1/2"-2" and nudge them in and out of the circle, to form the shape you see above. (It was 6:00 a.m. when I was doing the arranging... I wanted a photo, but there were none to be found!) It is then topped with a beaten egg and sprinkled liberally with sugar. In the oven for 35-40 minutes, it made our house smell wonderful!
The taste was even more wonderful. As I ate my third slice I realized that if I'm not careful, I could be happily eating these every day. The bucket of dough is still in my fridge... what other fun combinations could I come up with at 6:00 tomorrow morning??

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it's probably a good thing that it's too hot to do much baking in Luanda--my truffle shuffle would re-emerge at full force! It's bad enough with my beer and chocolate consumption and the hours in my commute.

Yu-um!

Unknown said...

one question though. Fresh blueberries? In Minnesota in March????? de onde vem?

giddings said...

Okay so I bought the book after tasting the scrumptious bread you brought to class... I'm on my THIRD recipe in just a few weeks. Which recipes did you use that day???
-Lisa

Anonymous said...

What else could you put inside? Are you serious? NUTELLA! I immediately thought of chocolate, just like Steph! Yummy! I wish that I were there to eat it! :)

Much Love,
Julie

Tiff said...

Looks wonderful. I admire you greatly for even being conscious at 6 am, let alone baking.

HomeGrownLife said...

Your lemon blueberry wreath looks so delicious! A friend of mine is currently loving this book too. I will have to look into it now...