Today on The Stay At Home Chef
we're showing you how to make star bread, also known as snowflake bread.
You guys have loved this recipe and Caytlin was telling me that she was afraid to make it a little bit because it looks like it's really hard to make,
but that's the cool secret about this bread, is that it looks so fancy but it's super easy to make.
so I'm just gonna be the voice and Caytlin's gonna be the hands.
Teach me your ways...
We'll show you how to make it.
You're gonna need about 2 pounds of dough.
I'm just using my cinnamon roll bread today, but you could also use store-bought dough,
you could use crescent sheets, you know that not the crescent rolls but the sheets,
could you use like puff pastries?
Puff pastry would be great.
You could also use pie crust, you know how they sell them in like the circles,
the perfect circle...
yeah it's perfect.
So really the possibilities are endless.
We're going to show you how to make a cinnamon roll version one today with a cinnamon filling,
but we have a lot of different flavor options on the website, both sweet and savory,
or you can just be creative and make your own flavors.
Now you're going to take your dough and you're going to cut it into 4 even pieces,
so right in half,
and then in half?
Half and half again.
You need 4 pieces.
Fractions are hard.
That's not even at all, but we'll fix it.
We'll fix it.
Like I said, fractions are hard.
Listen it's fine because you're just gonna, you're just gonna take it,
and you're gonna shape it into a little dough ball.
Perfect!
Now this is how I shape a dough ball:
I just take the palm of my hand and place it in a cupping shape against a clean surface and roll.
Now this one's kind of big, so you may want to use 2 hands if you have smaller hands like me.
and you just once again use the palms of your hands to swirl it around against the clean countertop,
and it kind of swirls the bottom and closes it up into a neat little ball,
and really that's just so it's easier to roll out a perfect circle.
Now if you're using puff pastry sheets or the Crescent sheets, you're going to cut the circle,
You're not gonna...
That makes sense.
roll it into a double.
Make a circle.
We're going to roll these out into a circle next.
That makes sense.
Okay so you're gonna...
You make it look so easy.
Okay so you're doing it wrong.
Okay.
You're doing it with the corner of your thumb and index finger.
You want to do the palm of your hand.
So start with one hand because that's going to show you, and then you can move to both.
Oh you have so much more control.
Yes.
So pinky on the counter...
Yeah, it should...
the palm of your hand.
There we go.
There's like a flow.
And the more pressure you can put from the palms as you get more control...
Do you feel it?
I feel it.
Once you have 4 even pieces roll each piece into a large circle, and you want it to be roughly the width of your baking sheet,
because like this,
You do it so naturally!
This recipe predates The Stay At Home Chef in when I started developing this recipe.
You can see right here this will fit on my baking sheet perfectly, and the dough is pretty thin.
Place that right down onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
Now you can assemble it right here on the baking sheet, or you can move the little parchment paper and do it to the side,
and then if you get a little bit of shrinkage from the elasticity of the dough, you can actually just roll it out further right here on the parchment paper.
You want to roll out all four circles and then it'll be time to make our filling.
So for the filling you'll need softened butter,
as well as 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon,
and you just want to grab a spoon and stir that together.
This is your cinnamon sugar mixture.
Then it's time to start layering.
So we have our bottom piece of dough,
and we're going to spread... it's like 1 1/2 tablespoons about of softened butter
onto each layer.
You want to leave a little bit around the edge so that we can seal it up later.
Then you'll sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar mixture in a little even layer right on top of that butter.
Oh it's fine.
It's not even.
Spread it out.
You can just spread it out, right?
Right like that, okay.
We're totally good.
Okay.
Then we're gonna grab the next piece of dough and layer that on.
So I just want to kind of keep those edges clean,
and then I just kind of pinch because it wants to shrink doesn't it?
Yeah it wants to shrink.
So then just pinch the edges for each layer.
Then we're just going to repeat the process with more butter and more cinnamon sugar.
Now if you have problems with shrinkage on your dough you can always roll it out a little bit.
You want to be pretty gentle because you don't want to squish any of the filling out, but this way it'll help it kind of spread out so that you can then pinch it,
and seal it shut.
And yeah you really only use 1/4 cup.
It seems like you should use more.
Nope.
Then for the last layer you just leave the top naked basically.
This is so amazing, I love it!
Well it's actually really easy though because now is the fun part.
We're gonna cut it and this is where it's going to be super beautiful, but I promise this is actually - the fun part -
so easy and so fun.
Now we need to mark the center so I'm just going to put a little tiny bowl, but if you don't have a little bowl it's fine.
Just make a little 2-inch circle.
You just need to mark it in the dough so that you can see it there.
Now I'm just going to leave the bowl there so you can see it.
You want to be approximate in the center, it's really easy.
You can just eyeball it.
We're going to take it and cut into 16 pieces.
So the easiest way to do this is first do the little cross so we have 4 sections.
Then do those in half again.
So then in half again.
and how many pieces is this Caytlin?
It's 16.
I can do that fraction.
And honestly even if some of your pieces aren't even that's totally okay.
This is the fun part.
You're going to grab 2 pieces,
twist outwards,
and I kind of do it twice.
Really you can get away with once but I like that more swirled look that you can see coming out,
and then at the end you just pinch it together.
Oh my gosh I love this!
Isn't it so pretty?
It really is.
You can already see this bread is so pretty,
especially if you use the different fillings.
So if like we have a strawberry cream cheese one,
Sounds so good.
So pretty with the red.
We have a pesto parmesan one,
The green you can see, like so pretty.
I'll just do all of the pieces twice around.
Not so impossible after all is it?
Seriously I can't believe like that was that simple.
It's so easy and it's so pretty!
I'm so excited to go home and make these.
We're gonna place this back onto our baking sheet.
It's important that you don't let this rise any further or you're gonna lose your shape.
So we're gonna bake this in our preheated oven of 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
Now if you're using puff pastry or Crescent sheets or something,
you'll want to look on the package instructions and go with that time and watch it carefully in the oven.
You want it to be golden brown.
Once your bread is cooled you can serve it plain, you can frost it with your favorite frosting,
I have some ideas on the website, or you can just dust it with powdered sugar.
There's even options for savory toppings.
So delicious, so pretty, and surprisingly easy.
Doable for sure.
You've totally got this.
Thanks for watching.
You can find the full written recipe in the video description.
Be sure to subscribe, like, and follow, and check out the rest of our recipes,
where you can find hundreds of restaurant quality recipes
you can easily make at home.
We'll see you later.