Sultanas of Plait

Recently I discovered I own 3 baking books, two of which are dedicated to bread. One of the bread books is The World of Bread by Alex Goh who has authored a few books. He is also a teacher chef and is quite famous. I have of course never heard of him. I probably bought his bread book years ago when I was attempting bread making and the instructions looked kinda easy. As it turned out, I never attempted any of his recipes and I even forgot I bought the book.

from the book

Yesterday I looked through the book and decided to make Mixed Fruit Plait because it looked like something I could make. I did not use mixed fruits. Instead I used Australian sultanas because I have a bag of them.

As it turned out, Alex Goh's instructions are deceivingly easy. I think you need to be someone who already knows the basic of bread making before attempting his recipes because his instructions are pretty sparse like "knead to form a dough". I used my Kenwood mixer to mix and knead the dough and it took like forever and the dough was still super sticky and nowhere near the window pane stage. After 30 mins, I got a bit worried and I finally did it by hand. I did manage to get my window pane eventually although I wondered how the lengthiness of the kneading would affect the outcome.

I squashed all the sultanas onto the dough and hoped they won't burst out later on.

Six balls waited to be braided.

Yep. Them sultanas tried to escape my dough. At the baking school, the chefs get angry if they see fruits sticking out of the dough. But at home I'm queen of my own kitchen and I said it's okay.

After 20 mins of baking at 180 deg C, the plait is baked. I'm a little disappointed it's not prettier.

One half of the bread looks better because I struggled with the second half of the braiding. It's like I have two left brains!

You know those sultanas that burst out of the dough? They tasted real good. Only one got burnt and even that tasted good.

In case you're wondering sultanas, like raisins also come from grapes, except sultanas come from white fleshed ones.

The texture of the bread is soft and nice.

The sultanas are scattered here and there. That's good.

The taste is not bad. And there's no after taste. Don't you hate it when you eat something and there's this lingering taste in your mouth? Surprisingly the serious amount of kneading did no damage to the bread. Will I make it again? Probably not. Unless I find a recipe for a whole grain version.