Monday, October 26, 2009

Bread Baking Babes: Taunted by Tanta Wawa

Guess what? I'm not a bad babe this month!

Well, let me rephrase that, I'm not a bad, bad Babe this month.

You see, I did make the dough for our wonderfully fun and creative bread of the month, Tanta Wawa (Peruvian Bread Babies),

BBB logo october 2009

that the fantastic Gretchen of Canela and Comino, our host kitchen, brought back from her beloved Peru. But, apparently, not only are the golf gods not smiling on me but the yeast queen has deserted me as well.

Earlier this month, Sara, Stephanie, and I got together on Skype on the only night for the past several weeks that I have had time to bake for a marathon night baking session. Because of my crazy 60+ hour weeks of the past month and a half, I had not only a cherry tart/turnover to mess up (more on that in the future) but I also totally screwed up a remake of twelve grain bread and Gretchen's lovely Tanta Wawa.

I'm sure it wasn't the recipe, even though Gretchen and others did report that dough was very dry. I'm absolutely positive it wasn't the flour or even the fact that I was desperately skyping back and forth with my girls about the failure of my turnover dough. Nope, it was none of these things. I'm sure I'll never know but for some strange reason, my dough never relaxed enough for me to do anything with it.

It just lay there in it's little round, tight shape taunting me.

Taunted By Tanta Wawa Dough

Daring me to try and stretch it out into a fat, happy baby.

Twelve hours later, I decided that it was never going to relax and I had to send the dough off that place where bad dough goes.

Unfortunately, I haven't had time since to give the Tanta Wawa another go. But, hopefully, this week, I may find a bit of time one evening to see if I can get a lovely baby or two. Thanks Gretchen for a really different take on our bread of the month.

To check out some more successful and adorable Tanta Wawa, go check out the other Babes in the sidebar. If you want to be a Bread Baking Buddy, check out what you have to do to make Tanta Wawa yourself at Gretchen's!


Tanta Wawa (Peruvian Bread Babies)
from Gretchen at Canela and Comino
(Note about this recipe: After several of us reported how hard the dough was to work with, our lovely Gretchen went back to the kitchen and adapted the recipe to make an easier dough to work with. That reworked recipe is what is posted here, not the recipe that resulted in the stiff dough ball above)

Makes 4 small

sponge
1 egg
1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of yeast

1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1 cup of whole wheat flour
2 cups of bread flour
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of dry yeast
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon of sesame seeds
2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 cup of lowfat milk
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of butter
2 eggs (at room temperature)
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
1 egg yolk (for painting)

1. In a bowl combine 1/2 cup of flour, 1 egg, 2 T water, pinch of yeast and 1 T of sugar. Let that sit for a few hours. In a bowl, mix the flours, sugar, yeast, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and sesame seeds. Sprinkle over the sponge.

2. Add the 2 eggs and vanilla to the flour mixture. Measure the milk, water and butter in a measuring cup. Heat for 30 seconds in the microwave, pour into the flour mixture. Mix well then turn out and knead for 10-15 minutes, using additional flour if necessary. Divide dough into 4 portions of 250g each. Form them into ovals. Cover and let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

3. Stretch each dough ball into the form of a "fat baby". (*note: This is where things are really vague...use the linked photos for ideas). Place them on baking sheets which have been greased and floured. Cover with plastic and let the dough babies grow to three times their size. (*note: no indication of how long! Sorry!)

4. Preheat the oven to 180C.

5. Brush the egg yolks over the dough babies. Bake at 180C for 30 minutes.