Butter Loaf

I was craving for butter loaf for my Sunday afternoon tea. My first encounter with this gorgeous loaf is when i came across of them in a local bakery here. It was soft,spongy and full of buttery flavour. Since, the weather are too hot and i'm lazy enough to drive over to city centre, decided to bake my own. At first i was skeptical to give it a try but, managed to come up with a beautiful loaf.

The whole house smells wonderful with sweet buttery aroma and the gorgeous golden yellow colur of the butter on every slice. The recepi yields two 9"inch loaves and stays good for 3-4 days in room temperature and longer when refrigerate. The loaf went into the girls breakfast box with generous slab of butter or fruit jam and goes really well toasted.


Ingredients

3 1/2 cups bread flour
2/3 cup warm milk
2 tbsp active yeast
5 tbsp butter
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup diced cold butter
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp bread flour, for dusting


Methods

In a large bowl, combine bread flour,yeast,honey,salt,milk,eggs and 5 tbsp butter. Knead until the dough soft and smooth for approximately 12-15 minutes.

Place the dough in a large greased bowl. Cover with damp clean kitchen towel and place in a warm place for the dough to rise for about 1 1/2 or 2 hours.

Punch down the dough and transfer to a clean working surface lightly dusted with flour

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 1/2" inch diameter rectangular. Place the diced cold butter on the 1 side of the dough and overlap with the other half of the dough. Gently roll to a even sized rectangular.

Fold the dough to resemble an envelope ( bring the 2 ends of both sides of the dough to the middle and overlap them.  Roll again the dough into rectangular.

Shape the dough into log by rolling the sides that facing you. Make sure to tighthen the dough will rolling. Cut the log into two ( you'll have 2 lofs now) and make another cut lenghtwise on both logs. Take one log and start braiding by overlapping the cut pieces. Seal both ends of the dough and place into a greased loaf pan.

Repeat the process with the remaining log. Cover the loaf pan wid kitchen towel and place in a warm place to proof for 30 minutes.

Brush the dough with beaten egg yolk. Bake in 180'C or 350'F oven for about 30 minutes or till dark golden.

Remove frm oven, cool on the loaf pan for 5 minutes.

Transfer into a cooling rack and brush with butter while the bread still hot.

Cool completely before slicing.