Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sunflower Decorative Bread

Sun bread is probably one of my favorite decorative loaves. I am a complete dork for anything yellow, but especially sun flowers flapping in the breeze. Looking at them makes me think of the 1970's and everything happy and shining with joy. It's a very nice place in my mind, full of lollie-pops and chocolate factories. I go there often. I showed this sunflower loaf early in the history of my blog, but didn't get into any detail on how to make it. I thought we would do a crazy cool tutorial Tuesday on this one. What do you think? Are we sunny enough?
You will need one pound of prepared bread dough of your choice. You can find it here: 5 day bread dough . Roll out the dough in a ring of happiness. 1/2 inch thick, but small enough to fit on a full size sheet pan.
Transfer to a lightly oiled sheet pan or baking stone.


Finish up the jam. Clean the jar. Turn it over on the bread. One small jelly jar is about perfect.

Lightly mist the top of the bread with water or olive oil. I've seen it done with egg wash and then topped with seeds. You decide. I'm going with oil.
Sprinkle 1-2Tablespoons of flour over the top of the bread, without removing the jar.
Lightly spread the flour around. Flour power. Sorry, that was lame. I shouldn't try to make stupid jokes. Pun-ishment enough!
Remove the sad little jelly jar that is now dotted with flour and oil.

Step into the magic circle and make a wish. Okay. I'm not a fairy princess...but I can bake bread like one.
Here's the tricky part. Ready?
Cut 3/4 inch wedges all the way around the circle, leaving the middle alone.
Shameless product plug...Pampered Chef makes really good forged cutlery knives. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.
Now, slightly pull out the wedged and lay them flat on their sides.
Ta-duh!
Raise until doubled. Bake 375 degrees 30-35 minutes. When done, feel free to use the bread decorative technique for painted breads from my blog. It will look very swanky.
There you go! Oh and if you missed the giveaway of the waffle iron, be sure to hop on over to yesterday's post to join the fun!
Whole Grain Waffle Mix for Toaster Waffles (and a ...

9 comments:

Anja said...

Beautiful!I love sunflowers and bread. I admire Your works.

J. P. said...

Lol, love the Ferris Beuler reference. Beautiful as always.-Lisa

mlebagley said...

Just had a jaw dropper aha moment and wanted your advice. You know that 'everything bagel topper' in your frozen dinner rolls you did? Could I use that instead of the flour? And if I did should I use the egg wash instead of the oil? I'm in charge of rolls for the family Easter dinner at the in-laws and thought I might 'Wow!' them with this beautiful sunflower bread...and then they could break off a 'petal' for their roll...what do you think? Your advice?

Manu said...

Ciao
è la prima volta che ti scrivo, ma seguo da moltissimo il tuo blog, mi affascinano i tuoi pani decorati, sono uno più bello dell'altro ........ oggi questo bellissimo girasole è veramente fantastico, lo farò prestissimo anche se senza decori
sei bravissima

un salutone e auguri
Manu

ps: se mi riesce bene mi lasci metterlo nel mio blog?

Chef Tess said...

Em, oh yes! I love your idea! It would totally work. You will need an egg wash, but it would loook soooo cooool!!

Manu...I don't know what your saying but I can read "fantastico"! Thank you.

Unknown said...

So that is how it is done. Thanks for the information.

CakeStudent said...

Thank you for the tutorial.. I made this bread and blogged about it myself. It was so much fun making this bread!

Unknown said...

So cute! My daughter saw this on Pinterst and is trying a "test" batch to see how it comes out for her 4H Fair entry this year. We used a honey, wheat and sunflower seed bread dough recipe and used an egg wash with poppy seeds for the middle, and brushed the "flower petals" with egg yolk with some tumeric mixed in to make the petals yellow. I'll have to let you know how it goes - but I'm confident she'll get a blue or purple ribbon. Thanks for such a cute idea!

Rajan said...

Nice