🥕 Carrot Bread 🍞

Photo Credit: Mali Maeder

 

Happy Sunday!

Today I'd like to share a recipe I found on Swissmilk's website. Swissmilk, as you may guess from the name, promotes Swiss milk by coming up with creative ways to use milk in recipes. 

One of these recipes caught my attention because it's a carrot bread.

Wait, what?

Not a carrot cake, not a bread as in zucchini bread, a yeast bread containing grated carrots. 

Carrots are my state's iconic food item.

Switzerland consists in 26 cantons = states. Most of them have very distinct and famous culinary specialties like cheese fondue or Rösti = hash browns. I live in Aargau, and we are known for carrot (cake).

I've always been wondering why, though. It's not like you drive across our state and all you can see is carrot fields? Upon researching I found out the following: They didn't really produce tons of carrots but turnips and sugar beets - which makes sense because in one of our neighbour towns there is a sugar mill. During the second half of the 19th century the first (painted) picture postcards appeared, featuring carrots - simply because they were more decorative than the other root veggies.

So what will we need to make this carrot bread?

Recipe

8 cups flour - all purpose flour is fine, if you can find anything finer ground, even better (1kg)

3 teaspoons salt

1 cube (42g) fresh yeast or 4 teaspoons dry yeast (14g)

3 teaspoons sugar

3.5 tablespoons melted butter (50g)
2 cups whole milk, warm (500ml)

1 cup finely shredded carrots (200g)

Instructions

• Peel and shred the carrots

• Mix the flour with the salt in a deep bowl and form a well.
• Crumble the yeast in a small bowl, sprinkle with sugar, dissolve with a little milk and pour into the flour well. Sprinkle a little flour on top and let rise on the heat until the yeast bubbles.
• Melt the butter in a small pan, remove from heat and deglaze with the milk.
• Add to the flour, work everything into a smooth dough and knead in the carrots.
• Let rise for 60 - 75 minutes until doubled in volume

• Transfer the dough to the floured work surface and work in as much flour as necessary until the dough no longer sticks.
• Form 2 - 4 loaves (or balls) and let rise for 20 -30 minutes.

• Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake in a preheated oven 428°F (220°C) for 5 minutes. 
• Reduce the heat 392°F (200°C) and finish baking in 25 - 30 minutes.
• (Optional): Brush the still hot surface with water.

Enjoy with smoked salmon and / or cream cheese. I put the remaining breads in the freezer and will thaw them for Easter weekend. We'll probably eat it along with hard boiled eggs and chocolate bunnies ;--)

PS: Here's a tutorial on how to make silk tie dye eggs.