Droppin' Loaves: A Bread Blog
Sweet coconut
Posted: 2010 Jul 29 (Thu) 14:42 UTC
I regrouped to try to make coconut bread again, armed with coconut flakes and some sugar. I did some more reading to see what other people do and found that milk, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla might help out.
To put together a recipe, I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and started with a "dry ingredient" column and a "wet ingredient" column. I need 3¼ dry and 1½ wet for a single loaf. I made up the amounts for each ingredient, basing it on breads I've made before. But I'm still not sure about how to use coconut, so this isn't final:
- Dry
- ½ c. coconut flakes
- ¼ c. turbinado sugar
- ½ c. coconut flour
- ½ c. whole wheat flour
- 1½ c. all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- 2¼ tsp. yeast
- 2 tsp. salt
- Wet
- ¼ c. milk
- ¼ c. melted butter
- 1 egg
- ¾ c. water
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
I would have liked to use more milk, but we ran out.
I mixed the dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon, and I whisked the wet ingredients in another bowl. I added the wet to the dry and continued stirring with the spoon. As I stirred, the dough responded strangely. It compacted and looked very dry. And yet it was wet to the touch. I covered the dough and let it sit for 2 hours before putting it in the fridge overnight.
I wonder if maybe baking powder would be better instead of yeast. That way, I could bake it immediately and not have to wait for a rise. Not that this one rose all that much. I think I can blame all the butter for that. It just doesn't seem like a good environment for yeast, but I really want to make a yeast recipe that works. Yeast just feels more miraculous than using baking powder. Biological instead of chemical.
I baked in the morning after a 40-minute yeast wake-up. As usual, I could maybe have baked it longer than 60 minutes, but the outside was turning quite dark and I didn't want to burn it. The oven was at 350°F. We tried to cut it before it was cooled down. Probably a mistake because it crumbled into pieces with a knife. Actually, even when it cooled down, it was hard to cut. Crumbled like a muffin.
But it tastes really good. The cinnamon and texture of the coconut flakes make me think that there are raisins. The sweetness is just right. It doesn't need more sugar, unlike all recipes I've found. Even though it looks crumbly and dense, it's quite fluffy and grainy.
I ran out of coconut flakes, so I need to go buy more. I'm thinking I should drop the coconut flour even more. That stuff is too gluey. I don't recommend it. I also want to up the milk to soften the grain. I can maybe lower the amount of butter, too.
