Pane e lievitati

Twelve Loaves: Bara Brith with candied orange

I didn’t know anything about Bara Brith till I’ve opened my beloved “English Bread and Yeast Cooking” at page 437. I wasn’t supposed to test that recipe by Elizabeth David till Twelve Loaves launched its April Theme: Oranges.
Candied orange peels have been my “Open sesame” into fruit breads of Wales.

Cake or bread, Bara Brith recipe comes from Wales. To be more precise from North of Wales were it’s called teisen dorth (meaning ‘cake loaf’). Being a traditional cake, many recipes exists. I started from Elizabeth David one’s. It was taken from A Welsh Welcome, published in 1969. Elizabeth reduced the sugar portion. I’ve tried to convert it to the sourdough version and added pain d’epice spices. Finally, I made half of the suggested ingredients quantities.

I’m really satisfied with Bara Brith. It was a perfect companion for an afternoon tea during a sunny saturday.
Bara Brith has all the richness of flavours of fruit bread. Candied orange peels give it an elegant touch. It remainded me of Xmas fruitcake baked some years ago. I’m not such an expert of british baking tradition. Anyway I’m acquiring a great interest on it given Bara Brith and other occasional readings.

Bara Brith

Bara Brith

120 grams of sourdough
200 grams farro flour
130 grams kefir (or yogurt)
a pinch of salt
30 grams of cane sugar
85 grams of currants
30 grams orange candied peel
1/4 teaspoon of pain d’epice spices

Put flour, sourdough and kefir in a bowl.
Mix ingredients to a fairly light dough. I worked it for 10 minutes.
Cover and leave to rise for almost 2 hours.

Meanwhile put chopped candied orange peel and currants in a bowl.
Add cane sugar.

Work the fruit mixture into the dough, using your hands.
Ensure that the fruit and sugar are evenly distributed in the dough.
Put the dough into a loaf tin.
Cover with a light cloth and leave to rise for 14 hours.
Bake in a hot oven at 220°C for 30 minutes and 200°C for other 10 minutes.
Leave the loaf to cool a little and serve it for your 5 pm tea.

It’s now your turn to take part to Twelve Loaves.
#TwelveLoaves April: Oranges.
The month of March was filled with gorgeous strawberry breads! We have chosen ORANGES for our April theme! Choose a recipe including oranges. Your bread of choice recipe must include in the recipe: oranges, orange marmalade, orange zest. In addition to being in the dough, it could also be added to a glaze. Whatever you bake, (yeasted, quick bread, crackers, muffins, braids, flatbreads, etc) have fun and let’s have a delicious month of bread with ORANGES.  Let’s get baking!

If you’d like to add your bread to the collection with the Linky Tool this month, here’s what you need to do!

1. When you post your Twelve Loaves bread on your blog, make sure that you mention the Twelve Loaves challenge in your blog post; this helps us to get more members as well as share everyone’s posts. Please make sure that your bread is inspired by the theme!

2. Please link your post to the linky tool at the bottom of my blog. It must be a bread baked to the Twelve Loaves theme.

3. Have your Twelve Loaves bread that you baked this April, 2014, and posted on your blog by April 30, 2014.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess. #TwelveLoaves runs so smoothly thanks to the help of the lovely Renee from Magnolia Days and Heather from girlichef.

Here are the proposal of breads by some Twelve Loaves supporters:

Please enter yours using Linky Tools:

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Click here to enter your bread for Twelve Loaves