Today, on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make this beautiful star bread at home.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers! Sam here and I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested,
well researched, and perfected recipe. Today's bread may look intricate
and complicated but don't be overwhelmed.
If you follow my steps, I guarantee yours is going to turn out just like the pictures.
Let's go ahead and get started. Now. Let's start with our liquid.
You're going to need one cup of whole milk, and we are going to add 1/3 cup of water to this.
Now this is a yeast bread. So we're going to need to activate that yeast with a warm liquid.
So we're going to take this over to our microwave
where we will heat it until it reaches a temperature that's between 105 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
You always want to stir the mixture before you take the temperature.
Now I want to add this to a large mixing bowl.
You can absolutely make this recipe by hand,
but today I'm using my favorite kitchen appliance my stand mixer.
You'll need 2 and 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast for this recipe.
So we'll just sprinkle that over the milk mixture,
and I also like to add just a pinch of sugar, just to help the yeast activate a little faster.
I like to just give that a quick mix to make sure everything's combined
and we'll let this sit for about 5 to 10 minutes,
or until the mixture has a nice foamy yeast cap on it. If your mixture does not
look like mine most likely your yeast is dead.
You're going to have to toss it out and start over. After about 5 to 10 minutes
we can add 1/3 cup of granulated sugar. We'll add 5 tablespoons of melted unsalted
butter, and you don't want this to be too hot
when you add it. We’ll also add 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk. That extra egg
yolk adds a little bit of extra tenderness to our bread. We’ll also add 2 teaspoons of table salt.
And for this whole recipe you're going to need about 5 cups of flour,
but for now, we're just going to be adding two cups into our
mixing bowl. Now stir everything together
until it's well combined, and I don't like to use my mixer just
yet because it's a little bit large and it doesn't mix everything
well. Not until I add more flour.
So I'm just going to use my spatula to mix everything together.
So now we can go ahead and attach our dough hook.
With our mixer on low speed we're going to gradually add that remaining 3 cups of flour.
Now my mixer is still having a little bit of trouble getting the sides right now.
So I'm just going to be pausing occasionally to scrape the sides of the
bowl because I want all of that flour to get worked in. Now here
is an important note with flour. Anytime
you're making you bread, the amount of flour you actually need is most likely going to vary.
I'm going to be gradually adding flour
until I get the right consistency for the dough. Now in just a second
I will show you exactly what that looks like.
Now we'll continue to add this flour
until we have a dough that is slightly tacky to the touch,
but not so sticky that it comes off on your fingers.
So as you can see right now, this is still too soft.
Now I've added all three of my additional cups at this point.
You may not need this much but it's also possible you could need more.
How's that for being nice
and vague? So I'm going to continue to add flour, about a spoonful at a time,
until we get the consistency we're looking for.
Once our dough is beginning to cling to itself on the beater,
it's pulling away from the sides of the bowl, and if we touch it,
as you can see it's still a little bit tacky,
but it's not so sticky that it's coming off of my fingers or that it's unmanageable.
This is perfect. Turn your mixer to low speed
and we are going to let the mixer do the heavy lifting
and knead this dough for another 5 minutes until it is smooth and elastic.
So this is perfect. So we're going to transfer this to a lightly oiled bowl. I just
like to run a little bit of olive oil around the sides
and bottom. Let's transfer this to our bowl.
We'll cover this with plastic wrap
and we'll set it in a warm draft-free place to rise until it's doubled in size. For me
this usually takes about one to two hours.
Once your dough has risen we can transfer it to a clean surface.
Now if your dough is sticking to your fingers, or the countertop,
you can lightly dust the surface with a little bit of flour,
but you don't want to overdo it. Now
I'll divide this dough into 4 even pieces.
I'm going to form each one into a nice round disc.
We’ll set these aside and cover them with plastic wrap.
We're going to let them rest for about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, we can prepare our filling. Now you're going to
need 6 tablespoons of softened unsalted butter
for this recipe.
So you want to go ahead and get that out. Now if yours is still a little bit cold.
You can pop it in the microwave
because you want it to be really easy to spread on your dough. In a separate bowl,
We're going to combine 1/2 cup of firmly packed light brown sugar, a tablespoon of ground cinnamon,
and I like to add just a pinch of salt, about 1/8 teaspoon. We’ll stir this together
until it's nicely combined.
Switch over to my whisk so I can break up those brown sugar clumps.
So you can set your filling ingredients aside
and we'll go ahead and start working with one of our rounds of
dough so long as it's had 15 minutes to rest.
So we'll go ahead and transfer this to a lightly floured surface. We’ll use a
rolling pin to roll this into an even 11 inch circle.
Now, of course, I can't roll and even circle to save my life.
So I'm just going to do the best I can. The dough is a little bit sticky.
So I'm going to dust it with a little bit of flour. You can use as much flour as you need,
but again don't over do it.
Now we’ll transfer this to a parchment paper lined pizza pan,
or you can use a baking dish. I like to use a pizza
pan because it doesn't constrict my star
any. So now grab your softened butter and we'll spread two tablespoons over the surface of this dough.
This butter is a little bit cold still.
So I'm just going to pop this in the microwave. Makes it a lot easier that way.
So grab your cinnamon sugar mixture now and sprinkle about a third of that over the butter.
I just use my hands and then I'll use my hands to just lightly spread that over the surface.
I just eyeball this. I don't measure it. Then set that aside
and let's go ahead and roll out another portion of our dough.
And we'll repeat with more butter. And more cinnamon and sugar.
Of course, we'll do the same thing with our next round of dough.
This one's a little bit messy, but don't worry. Everything is going to come together in the end.
Like I said, if I can do this, you guys can do this.
We’ll top This with the rest of our butter,
and the rest of our cinnamon sugar mixture. Now for our last piece of dough we’ll roll that out,
of course just like the others
but we are not going to be topping this one with any cinnamon
and sugar or butter, which is good because we should be all out at this point.
So here's where you get to fix things. If you're like me
and you can only roll out amoebas instead of nice pretty circles go ahead
and grab yourself a pair of kitchen shears, or a nice sharp knife and we can just trim up the edges.
You want all four of your circles to line up really
well, and you want the edges to be nice and rounded.
Now let's make the center
for our star. I like to use a biscuit cutter which you could use a cookie cutter,
or even a small glass.
This is about a 2 inch cutter. This is just going to mark the center.
I'm just going to press it lightly right in the center of that circle.
Now as you can see I didn't press all the way through. I just made a nice little indent
and now using that as our center point,
I'm going to cut this dough into quadrants,
but I'm not going to cut into or through that circle. Now,
I like to mark the dough before I cut
it because I like these quadrants to
be nice and even. See that one's a little crooked.
And usually I use kitchen shears because it's easiest.
We're going to need a total of 16 pieces.
So once you have your quadrants, you'll need to cut each of
those into four additional pieces. To do this
I like to cut each quadrant in half and then cut each of those halves in half again.
Okay. So here is where the magic happens. To make your beautiful star
you will want to firmly grip two pieces of the bread that are next to each other
and we are going to twist those away from each other
once. We'll twist them away from each other a second time, and then we'll go about halfway.
So that's about two and a half turns away from each other.
Now with these end pieces we are going to very, very firmly
press them into each other,
and be very firm and deliberate about
this because if you don't form that end piece of your dough together really
well it's just going to bake apart in the oven.
And we'll just do this all the way around our bread.
So I hope yours is looking as beautiful as this one is right now.
We're going to cover it with a clean towel
and we're going to let it rest again in a warm draft-free place
for another 30 minutes. While it’s resting go ahead and pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, once your dough has rested for 30 minutes,
I personally like to brush it with a little bit of egg wash. Now in egg wash is
just one egg mixed with about a teaspoon of water.
Now this step is optional.
But my favorite finishing touch is to sprinkle a little bit of course,
or turbinado sugar evenly over the bread.
You guys know I don't go light on the sugar. Now.
this will need to bake for about 20 to 24 minutes.
It should be a beautiful golden brown color on top when it's finished.
And that is how you make a beautiful show of stopping Star Bread completely from scratch.
I'm so excited for you to try this one. Please
let me know what you think when you try it out.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
It's such a shame to actually eat it after you've done all that work.
Mmm, no it's worth it.