Hi a massive welcome to Steve’s Kitchen. Regular viewers will remember the Nutella Tear and Share that I made
on here which was hugely popular. Well today we’re going to be making “O Tannenbaum,
oh Christmas Tree” version because we might as well, it’s coming up to Christmas. Let’s
make a Christmas Tree version of that bread. Come on let me show you how.
We’ll start with our dry ingredients, now I’m using strong or bread flour here. I’ve
got 450g that’s about a pound. Now with bread flour I always give the measurements
in imperial and metric weights but people always say to me’ what about in cups?’
Well cups are not as accurate; I don’t really like using them for flour. You can get a set
of scales on eBay for probably $5 I think, delivered almost anywhere in the world but
if you want to use cups, it’s around about 3 cups but don’t blame me if it’s a bit
dry or a bit wet. And into that we’re putting a 1/3rd of a
cup of sugar, just to sweeten the dough a little bit. About a 1/8th or a pinch of salt
and on the other side of the bowl here, 2 teaspoons of dried instant yeast. Now I’ll
just give those dry ingredients a little mix through.
And the next thing we’re going to add is a cup of milk into there, now I’ve warmed
this slightly in the microwave to help activate the yeast but don’t make it too hot.
I have 2 eggs over here which I’m just going to use the yolks of. So we’re add those
two yolks in there, keep the egg whites by the way we’ll be using those a little bit
later on. And lastly about 30g or an ounce of very soft
butter. Let’s just pop that into the mix as well. I’m going to use a fork now, just
to start to bind this together and I’m just using a fork to keep my hands clean at the
beginning of the mix and then we just want to get our hands in there now and start to
draw all this dough together. Now we should have a slightly sticky dough
here which I am now going to bring out onto my counter top and what we are going to do
is knead this dough for about 10 minutes. Now at this point you will see it is very
sticky and quite grainy don’t worry about that because that is going to get beautiful
and silky as we work the dough. So just push it out with the heel of your
hand, pull it back together, turn it and push it again. Keep stretching that out.
Now I like to make my dough by hand rather than a mixer because you get a feel for how
the bread should be, Just come down here, have a little look at this dough. Now if it
ends up, and I’ve been going for about five minutes, a little bit dry you can take your
hand in some warm milk and just dip it in and add some moisture back into this dough.
This is almost perfect now so I’m quite happy but egg sizes do vary a lot and that’s
why you might need to do that. Now if you look at that dough now, I’ve
been kneading it for a good 10 minutes and we’ve got a wonderful gluten build up on
there, it’s nice and elastic if I push in there it springs back and that is perfect
for me. That’s the texture you want. Now I’ll bring my bowl back here now. I’m
going to add about a tablespoon of oil into that bowl. Take my dough, just coat it over
with the oil and then what we want to do is just seal the bowl just to trap that moisture
in there. Now this dough is a very enriched dough so
it might take a little longer to rise, we need to pop this somewhere warm and in about
an hour, hour and a half it should have doubled in size.
Okay come and have a look at the dough now because it has risen beautifully and I’m
just going to uncover that now, just get that plastic off of there. Look at that; look at
the elasticity in that. Now let’s get that out of the bowl, I’m popping that down on
to a wooden board, I’m just going to reshape it into a ball and then we’re going to divide
this dough into half and then quarters. So we want 4 even pieces of dough and if you
want you can weigh them out. Now we’ll just take 3 of those and pop them
back in the bowl, if you’re going to be a long time you might want to cover that with
a damp cloth. What I’m going to do now is take this one
piece here. Now I’m going to roll this out now and I’m going and try and tease it into
shape but remember dough is like a water droplet on glass, it doesn’t want to actually go
the way we want, so we’re going to have to tease it gently.
First of all a little bit of flour on your counter top. The shape I’m going to be looking
for is a slightly square bottom and a sort of tear drop, triangle like a Christmas Tree.
Get a little bit of flour on your rolling pin and start to roll this out and as you
roll it we can just continue to shape the dough, ease out this end piece like this and
occasionally just let it rest because the dough wants to tighten itself back up.
Now you may ask what size this has to be and it really doesn’t matter, you’re going
to have an equal size for each piece of dough. So just come down here, I stretched that out
till it’s fairly thin, I can almost see my hand through it. I’ve got a long triangular
shape. I’ve got a piece of baking paper here and I’m going to lift this piece of
dough onto the baking paper now. And now the fun bit, we’re going to take
our Nutella, about a cup of Nutella, just warm it slightly in the microwave so you can
spread it easily. Now with the Nutella just slightly warm it’s going to be easier to
spread. Take it on to your dough and just using a spatula we’re going to spread it
out across the surface. Now as you come down to this bottom area,
we’re just going to leave a little bit. I don’t know if you can see there, we’re
going to leave a little bit of a gap because I’m going to be cutting that bit of pastry
away a little bit later on but just in the centre here where the trunk of the tree would
be I want to you also to add some Nutella. Now you might be tempted to put the Nutella
on really thickly, don’t do that because it will be a disaster.
Anyway the next thing we want to do, we want to move this piece of pastry out the way,
so I’m just going to slide a tray under that and then I want to pop this aside whilst
I roll another piece of pastry out to the same shape.
Now again flour the surface, get your second piece of dough and start to roll out the shape
to match the previous piece of dough. So now I’ve eased my second piece of dough out
and I’m actually using a ruler just to check, I’ve got about 30cm or a foot from there
to there and across that way a little bit extra on the length because of the tree.
What we do now, just slide this one to one side, bring our tray back and what we’re
going to do is gently lift this one and lay it on top of our previous piece. Take our
slightly warm Nutella and we’re going to spread Nutella on to this second layer, in
the same way as we did the previous one and then we can set our second layer aside while
we do a third layer. Okay there is my third layer of dough, now
I’ll just bring that back to here and we’re going to lift this one gently and lay it down
match it up as close as you can, drop it down on top of the other one, don’t worry if
it folds you can straighten that out. Then with our warm Nutella, again we are going
to put the last coating of Nutella on to the bread. Now set that aside, lick all the Nutella
off your fingers and we’re just going to make the top and final coat.
Now this is the final layer and we’re not going to be putting Nutella on to this. Let’s
just slide that out the way, Hopefully you can see it I’m seeing it my way round of
course but we’re just going to lay that across the top. What we’re going to now
is slide that off of our tray and we’re just going to ease out, you might even take
your rolling pin and just ease it out a little bit.
See what we want to do now is cut a straight line along these two edges. We’re going
to cut out this little area here and we’re going to leave a piece in the middle. Now
I might use a metal ruler just to do this, you could do it by eye and just cut. You want
nice, reasonably straight edges and then I’m just going to use a sharp knife and cut through
all three layers just be careful of your fingers, all four layers of the bread.
Now the next thing I’m going to do is just make an imaginary line on my pastry like that,
coming up at a slight angle towards the top of the tree. So you see it’s getting slightly
narrower as it comes up. The next thing we’re going to do is about
every inch on this pasty we’re going to cut a line all the way through up to that
centre line. I hope you can see that there. So you end up with this loose layer of pastry
here. And then we want a matching piece on the opposite side again you’re going to
cut all the way through the pastry and all the way down. Then what we’re going to do
is continue doing this going up each side about an inch every time.
Now have a look at that, doesn’t it look great as it is but you remember the last tear
and share we did where we twisted each of them. We’re going to do the same here; we’re
going to be twisting a couple of times, just twice around like that, lay it down. See that
lovely effect that has, the same with this one, I’m twisting in an upward motion so
one turn, I hope you can see that there, two turns and we’re laying it back down. Now
obviously the next one up again the same turn one and two but eventually as you get up to
the top here you’re only going to be able to do maybe one twist but that’s fine. I’ll
get on and do these ones.
Now when you’ve finished doing your twists just get your baking tray again and very gently, I want you to slide it back on to the baking
tray and there it is. It looks absolutely beautiful. Now we want to cover this with
a damp cloth, pop it somewhere warm for about half an hour, 40 minutes, I want to see this
puff up a little bit before it goes in our oven.
Now will you look at that, that’s been around 30 minutes and you’ll see it’s just puffing
up nicely. Now I’ve preheated my oven to 180C that’s 350F. Now that egg white we
kept, I’ve mixed it with a little bit of milk and I’ve just whisked it together.
Before this goes in the oven, I just want you to brush a little egg white wash over
the whole Christmas Tree. Now when the wash is on there we’re going to pop this in the
oven about 15 minutes but keep an eye on it, we don’t want it to go dark brown but a
lovely golden brown.
Now look at that that’s just come out the
oven, its piping hot. I want this to cool down a little bit on the side and then when
that’s cooled down I have got a little sugar and water. I’ve just dissolved some sugar
in some water there and I want to give this a nice gloss so I’m just going to pop it
on now. Bear in mind this is still fairly hot this bread but we’re going to give it
a nice sheen. Now whilst the sugar water is on there, I’ve got some white sesame seeds.
Now the reason I’m using these is I’m just going to sprinkle them along the edges
of the branches here and I think this just looks a little bit like snowdrops on a Christmas
Tree. Now there it is and it looks absolutely spectacular,
this was a lot of fun to make. I hope this December you’ll give this a try, its lots
of fun. Get the family involved. Please share the love, give this one the thumbs up. If
you do try and make this share your pictures across Google+, Facebook, Twitter whatever
you like. Have a fantastic Christmas; be good, I’ll see you next time.
Now that was a lot of fun and don’t forget there are lots of other Christmas recipes
on Steve’s Kitchen. I’ll leave the link up here to the Playlist. Don’t forget your
Christmas puddings and Christmas cakes, your mince pies and mincemeat of course. I’ll
leave a link to some other videos here as well. Please comment down below, see you next time