Tuesday, April 6, 2010

For the love of baking...


Fruit and Nut Loaf - No added Sucre

In the midst of cleaning and clearing the kitchen before we vacate the house I get carried away by these left over chunks of walnuts, almonds, black currants, dates, apricots and dried plums. I wanted to get rid of them so I can claim I cleared a shelf in the kitchen today! But how ? It is impossible for me to just eat all of those dry fruits at at that very moment in order to get rid of those bottles. A also calls out, "amma pashikaradu, edanum snack kudu" meaning "mom am hungry, give me a snack". I didn't want to do anything elaborate. So tried something like a fruit and nut bread with no sugar, no eggs, no vanilla extract, no butter, no milk. Just simplified plain whole wheat bread with dry fruits and nuts in it.

I used,

2 tsp instant yeast
50 ml lukewarm water
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
less than 1 tsp of cinnamon powder
a bowl or 2 full cups of mixed dry fruits and nuts (i used walnuts, almonds, black currants, dates, apricots and dried plums)

Preheat oven to 175 deg C.

In a huge bowl, prepare the yeast by beating it well with lukewarm water for approx 5 minutes. Add the flour and baking powder, cinnamon powder and salt - make a dough by adding water occasionally. Keep it aside by covering it with a damp cloth of about 1 hour. The dough would have risen to a certain level. Now add the bowl of dry fruits and nuts and mix well into the dough. This can be allowed to rise too by leaving aside for few hours. But i was running out of time and so placed the dough in two 10in*4in aluminium baking sheets. Just grease the sheets with butter before placing the dough in order to get that non-stick feel.




Bake for 40 minutes or until the usual tooth prick coming out dry test succeeds. Cool the loaves for a while before cutting. This is a yummy tea time loaf or a healthy morning breakfast since it has no added fat like butter or milk or oil or eggs and no sugar - the dry fruits act as the sweeteners.


No comments:

Post a Comment