Hawaiian Braided Bread

Alright, I decided to have a go at some Dutch oven bread. Since I have no idea how to cook bread, I searched around and found a recipe for Hawaiian Braided Bread. It is not my intention to reproduce the recipe I used but rather to chronicle my attempt at cooking this bread.

The recipe I used came from Byron's Dutch Oven Recipes and can be found here. There are a ton of other recipes on this site. Check them out.

First I ran out and got all of the ingredients. Then I mixed up the dough and kneaded it per the directions. Then I put it in a bowl to rise to double its size. This took a couple hours (an eternity it seemed). Here it is after rising.

Then I cut it into three parts, rolled them into thin ropes, rolled them in the macadamia nuts, and braided them together. I then put them in the oven to rise again to double their size. I set the oven in the sunshine to warm it and hasten the rising.

After it had risen and I brushed the dough with the melted butter and sprinkled with poppy seeds. I had timed my coals to be ready at about this same time. This picture is of the dough just prior to being put on the fire.



I made sure to rotate my pot about 1/3 turn every 10 minutes and to rotate the lid 1/3 turn the opposite direction to help distribute the heat.

I checked at about 30 minutes of cook time and the outer edges were beginning to brown. So, I moved all of the coals on the lid to the center to try and concentrate the heat closer to the center. I let it cook for 5 more minutes for a total of 35 minutes and then took the oven off all of the heat (removed the pot from the coals and the coals from the lid). I let it sit for 5 minutes to cook from the residual heat in the oven as per the instructions. Here is what it looked like.

It took me a little while to figure how to get the bread out of the pot without tearing it up. It didn't stick, I was just trying to be delicate.

I made some honey butter to spread on the bread and gave it a taste. WONDERFUL.

Thanks for the recipe Byron!!!