Daring Bakers: Beautiful breads

A LOVE FOR BREAD ART 

Beauty surrounded the Daring Bakers this month as our host, Sawsan, of chef in disguise, challenged us to make beautiful, filled breads. Who knew breads could look as great as they taste?

This was the brief for the February challenge and it was a challenge I really enjoyed. I still like the whole breadmaking process even after making breads for so long, but I have wanted to it to be a little "different" and bread art is the perfect way to liven it up a bit.

Cinnamon sweet bread

Sawsan gave recipes and showed us how to shape two breads: one is a cinnamon sweet bread and the other a Nutella twist. I used my own recipe for the dough but filled and shaped them as suggested. Because my loaves were smaller, I couldn't make enough slits in my Nutella bread (pictured below) to get properly shaped twists. But even with a less elaborate pattern, I still liked how the bread turned out.

Nutella twist

This year, Valentine's Day coincided with Chap Goh Meh (lovers' day in Chinese custom) and my section head decided we would have an office party to celebrate it. With the love theme, how could I not come up with a heart-shaped item?

Of course, it had to be bread. It's filled with a savoury chilli-date paste and shaped using instructions from this site. I added Cupid's arrow, although it is a little misshapen!

I will definitely be trying out more bread art from now on.