A decade of Bread Baking Babes: Happy anniversary!!

It has been 10 Years since I was asked to join a Bread baking group of women, who baked 1 bread a month, talked, laughed, learned, drank and shared together. It has been a very special time. Thanks Tanna and Karen (baking soda), who started this group,  for asking me, I have loved every year and every bread of it. And I'm proud to say I've baked them all (120). I had such fun looking at them all, and thinking: Oh that was a good one, and this one so delicious, wow we really baked a lot of divers breads. Happy birthday to all Bread Baking Babes, former and current ones and all Bread Baking Buddies too!

And on a sad note, this is the last time I've baked with the Bread Baking Babes, 10 years has been great, but I decided to step aside after all this time and all these breads and leave my Babehood. Thanks girls for all the fun. But now we first turn to this months wonderful bread to celebrate 10 years of Bread Baking Babes.

This month we go back to the first challenge we baked; the ROYAL CROWN TORTANO. Then I baked the bread twice with two different kinds of white flours and they turned out pretty good.This time I used Canadian strong white flour, didn't wander from the recipe like I did then; So I did let the bread rise upside down and I didn't hold back on the water and remembered to save my potato water for it. The only thing I did again was being scared that it wouldn't turn out good in the end.

This is a slow riser. My bread dough ring started out nice and plump, before I covered it with plastic and a tea towel. My daughter passed the kitchen counter where the bread was rising (or not) and lifted the towel, just to be sure there wasn't anything under it (she wanted to put something on it), that's how flat it was. It was hardly 2 cm high and had spread out a lot. O no, how will this ever become the glorious festive bread that I (k)need this month? Well nothing to do about that, just plop in on the fierce hot baking stone, pour some hot water in the tray underneath, close the door and don't look at it for at least 20 minutes. This bread felt the pressure of becoming a festive bread for this anniversary and it puffed up like a balloon. Now we were talking! It turned out to be the best, airiest, chewiest crumbs and perfect crust I have baked when making this recipe. Is that luck or did I really learn something in those 10 years! A very happy baker that 💖🍞! 

So Bread Baking Buddies out there, this is a beautiful bread to bake and we would be delighted if you would bake along to celebrate 10 years of Bread Baking Babes and Buddies! Bake, tell us about it and sent it to our UberBabe Tanna, who started all this fun together with Karen 10 years ago. Deadline 29th of this month. Happy baking!

Don't forget to check out the other Bread Baking Babes, current and former ones! I will add their links as they come online at the bottom of this post.

Royal Crown's Tortano (revisited: BBB Challenge #1 & #120)

Recipe Quantity: One 1200 g tortano

(PRINT recipe)

Time required for recipe: About 19 hours, with about 20 minutes of active work

Note about recipe: start this recipe the night BEFORE you want to bake the bread.

Recipe synopsis

The Evening Before Baking: Make the starter and if you like the mashed potato.

The Next Morning: Mix the dough and let it ferment for about 4 hours. Shape it, proof it for about 1 1/2 hours, and then bake the bread for about 45 minutes.

The evening before baking: making the pre-ferment:

1/4 tsp instant yeast

240 g (about 40ºC)

100 g unbleached bread flour

85 g  small potato

Stir the yeast into the water in a glass measure and let it stand for 5 - 10 minutes. Add 90 g of this yeasted water (discard the rest) to the flour and beat this very sticky starter until it is well combined. Cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment until it is full of huge bubbles and sharp tasting, about 12 hours. If your kitchen is very warm and the pre-ferment is fermenting very quickly, place it in the refrigerator after 3 hours of fermenting. In the morning, remove it and allow it to come to room temperature 30 minutes to an hour before beginning the final dough

Preparing the potato: For efficiency, you may want to prepare the potato the night before. Quarter it, then boil it in water to cover until it can be easily pierced with a knife tip, about 20 minutes. Drain; if desired, reserve the water for the dough. Press the potato through a ricer or sieve to puree it and remove the skin. Store it in a covered container in the refrigerator.

Bake day: mixing the dough

575 g unbleached bread flour

420 g water, including the potato water if desired, lukewarm

Pre-ferment

14 g honey

60 g potato puree

15 g salt

By stand mixer: With your hands or a wooden spoon, mix the flour and water into a rough, very wet dough in the work bowl of your mixer. Cover the dough and let it rest (autolyse) for 10 - 20 minutes.

Fit the mixer with the dough hook. Add the pre-ferment, honey, potato and salt and the mix the dough on medium speed for 15 - 20 minutes, or until very silky and wraps around the hook and cleans the bowl before splattering back around the bowl. This dough is almost pourably wet.

Fermenting and turning the dough:

Shape the dough into a ball and roll it in flour. Place it in a container at least 3 times its size and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let it ferment until doubled in bulk and filled with large air bubbles, about 4 hours. Using plenty of dusting flour, turn the dough 4 times in 20 minute intervals, that is, after 20, 40, 60, and 80 minutes of fermenting, the leave the dough undisturbed for the remaining time. Do not allow this dough to over ferment or ferment to the point of collapse, for the flavor and structure of your bread will suffer.

Shaping and proofing:

Turn the fermented dough out onto a well floured work surface, round it and let it rest for 20 minutes. Sprinkle a couche or wooden board generously with flour. Slip a baking sheet under the couche if you are using one for support.

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour over the center of the ball. Push your fingers into the center to make a hole, the rotate your hand around the hole to widen it, making a large 4 inch opening. The bread should have about 30 cm diameter.

Place the dough smooth side down on the floured couche or board and dust the surface with more flour. Drape it with plastic wrap and let it proof until it is light and slowly springs back when lightly pressed, about 1 1/2 hours.

Preheating the oven:

Immediately after shaping the bread, arrange a rack on the oven's second to top shelf and place a baking stone on it. Clear away all the racks above the one being used. Preheat the oven to 230ºC.

Baking:

Unwrap the bread and flip it onto a floured peel or a sheet of parchment paper. Do not worry about damaging the bread as you handle it; it will recover in the oven as long as it is not overproofed. Slash it with 4 radial cuts in the shape of a cross. Slide the loaf onto the hot baking stone and bake until it is very dark brown, 40-50 minutes, rotating it halfway into the bake. Let the bread cool on a rack.

(adapted from Artisan Baking Across America by Maggie Glazer)

__________________________

Check out what the rest of the Bread Baking Babes (current and former) 

baked for this 10th anniversary:

Karen Baking Soda - Bake my day!

Sara - I like to cook
Cathy - Bread experience
Karen - Karens Kitchen stories
Judy - Judy's gross eats
 Tanna - My kitchen in half cups
Elle - Feeding my enthusiasms
Elizabeth - Blog from OUR kitchen
Kelly - A messy kitchen
Aparna - My diverse kitchen
Katie - Thyme for cooking

Bread Baking Babes go Festive

And the Bread Baking Babes end this year with a festive bread with champagne. I am the Kitchen of the month and I’d like us to bake some Baba’s. A syrup drowned brioche-like bread. Well known is the Rum Baba, but to make it even more festive this one is drenched with a champagne-based syrup. You can choose another liquor or dessert wine or flavour with a light coloured fruit juice (like pineapple juice) to your liking.

You can make one large or smaller baba’s. The large one makes a nice centre piece when you’re having it for dessert, but it is a lot harder to get soaked enough. I made some extra soaking syrup in a little jar to pour over when served, to solve this.

I made one large Baba, but also made 12 smaller baba’s and I loved these even more. Easier to drench with syrup and much more festive to plate up as a lovely dessert. You can of course make 1 X-large, 2 large, 12 mini or something in between. Just keep an eye on the baking time time and check the core temperature in the bread if it's done.

They're not difficult to make, so have a go and bake these for Christmas or as a delicious in-between for new years eve. Become our Bread Baking Buddy, mix, bake, post and enjoy this recipe and let us know how they turned out. Send you details to me (notitievanlien (at) gmail (dot) com) and I'll send you the Bread Baking Buddy Badge for your efforts to place with our post, if you like. Please have your entries send in before the end of the year.  

BBBuddies are not very active lately, but if there are any of course I'll make a round up. Happy Baking.... and remember you only need a little champagne for this, so you can party with what's left in the bottle. Happy baking and Happy holidays! 🎄🎄🎄

Champagne Baba

(1 large or 12 small baba’s)

(PRINT recipe)

sponge:

100 g water

1 tsp instant dry yeast

1 TBsp sugar

100 g bread flour

dough:

180 g bread flour

½ tsp fine salt

¼ tsp instant dry yeast

1,5 tsp vanilla sugar

3 large eggs

90 g melted butter

soaking syrup:
150 g sugar

150 g water

120 g champagne (or Asti Spumante or fruitjuice)

200 g apricot jam (or use a sugar glaze)

Mix all the ingredients for the sponge together in a large bowl (the one you’ll be kneading the dough in). Now sprinkle 180 g bread flour over the sponge, so it is covered and leave to rest for about 1 hour.

Now add the salt, ¼ tsp dry yeast, vanilla sugar and eggs. Start to mix this. If using a standmixer, use the paddle attachment. When it comes together after a few minutes, add the melted (and slightly cooled) butter and keep working it. The dough is a bit batterlike, but be sure to get some gluten developed.

For one large Baba:

Place it in the moulds. You can use a loaf tin or a round baking form (I used a paper Panettone mould (Ø13,4 x H 9,5 cm), filled about half way up. Cover with plastic and leave to rise until 2-3 cm under the rim of the mould.

In the meantime don’t forget to preheat the oven to 180ºC (350-360ºF).
While the baba bakes make the soaking syrup. Combine the sugar and water in a small pan and heat until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Cool until warm. Add the champagne; set aside.

Bake for about 45-55 minutes, until golden brown on top. If the bread gets too dark too soon, protect the top with a sheet of tin foil. Check the temperature in the bread with a thermometer, it should be about 93ºC.

Take out of the oven and the tin and place on a deep dish. Poke the bread with a long wooden skewer from top to bottom. Brush the syrup all over it, and get as much as possible inside the bread, so take your time. Collect the syrup from the plate and keep pouring and brushing it, until all in absorbed in the bread.

For 12 small baba’s:

Grease a tray with 12 little moulds (containing about 75 ml each) and divide the dough in them. The dough shouldn’t be filling more than half of the shapes. Cover with plastic and let rise until almost to the rim.

In the meantime don’t forget to preheat the oven to 180ºC (350-360ºF). While the baba bakes make the soaking syrup. Combine the sugar and water in a small pan and heat until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Cool until warm. Add the champagne; set aside.

Place in the oven and bake for about 18 minutes, The Baba’s should be golden on top. Check the temperature in the bread with a thermometer, it should be about 93ºC.

Take them out of the oven and out of the mould. Place them in a wide shallow dish in one layer. Pour the champagne syrup over the baba’s. Now keep turning the baba’s one by one on all sides, including top and bottom, until all the syrup is absorbed.

Topping and serving:

Now heat the apricot jam in a small pan and let it boil, add a little water if it is too thick. Brush or pour it over the top. You can also opt for a simple sugar glaze. This topping keeps the moisture in. If you eat the baba’s on the baking day, you can also skip the topping

For an extra festive feel, serve with whipped cream and fresh fruit or jam.
The baba is best eaten on the day that it’s baked. But if not, keep in the fridge.

(inspired by a Beth Hensperger recipe)

Bread Baking Babes bake breakfast

I made other recipes of these several times before; the English Muffins that our dear Kitchen of the month Babe Elle Baker ("Feeding my enthusiasms") picked for us. This time they're sort of no-knead, which is easy. And the dough is made the day before baking, so they are ready to bake (on the stove) for breakfast without preparing anything. 

I was to lazy to make eggs florentine (with spinach), eggs royale (with smoked salmon) or eggs benedict (with bacon, which I don't eat) but just put a slice of baked pastrami and a stirred fried egg on my muffin and that was a wonderful breakfast. It is a treat to have fresh baked bread like that in the morning. But do not be mistaken, they're great for lunch too!

The original recipe called for 100 g honey, I reduced that to 40 grams so there was not a sweet taste to the bread, for me that worked better when combined with eggs. I didn't make any other changes to the recipe. With these sort of rolls you always need a lot of cornmeal or rice flour to keep them from sticking, especially because they rested overnight, I always find it a shame that I have to throw that out after using it. The chickens didn't want it. That was the only thing that is not good about these.

So wanna treat your family or yourself to a luxureus breakfast with these delicious English muffins.... go and bake some too. Become our Bread Baking Buddy, Tell us how it went, post, make a picture of it ad send all of this to Elle (look for her email at her blog; deadline 29th of this month. Happy baking!

English Muffins

Makes 8-12 muffins

(PRINT recipe)

285 g bread flour

140 g whole wheat flour

10 g fine salt

4 g instant dry yeast

340 g cold milk

40 g honey

1 large egg white, cold

145 g fine cornmeal, for dusting

30 g butter, for griddling

In a large bowl, mix bread flour, whole wheat flour, kosher salt, and yeast together until well combined. Add milk, honey, and egg white, stirring with a flexible spatula until smooth, about 5 minutes. Cover with plastic and set aside until spongy, light, and more than doubled, 4 to 5 hours at 21°C. (The timing is flexible depending on your schedule.)

For the second rise: Thickly cover a rimmed aluminum baking sheet with an even layer of cornmeal. With a large spoon, dollop out twelve (or less) portions of dough; it's perfectly fine to do this by eye. If you'd like, pinch the irregular blobs here and there to tidy their shape. I ended up making just 9 muffins, more didn’t fit on my sheet. Sprinkle with additional cornmeal, cover with plastic, and refrigerate at least 12 and up to 42 hours. MIne came out quite flat, don't be alarmed, this will fix itself when baked.

To griddle and serve: Preheat an electric griddle to 160°C or warm a (cast iron) skillet or griddle over medium-low heat. I used a frying pan. When hot, add half the butter and melt; griddle muffins until their bottoms are golden brown, about 8 minutes. Flip with a square-end spatula and griddle as before. Transfer to a wire rack until cool enough to handle, then split the muffins by working your thumbs around the edges to pull them open a little at a time. Toast before serving and store leftovers in an airtight container up to 1 week at room temperature (or 1 month in the fridge).

(source: Serious Eats, Stella Parks,http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/04/no-knead-english-muffins-recipe.html)

Bread Baking Babes bake seasonal bread (or rolls)

This month our lovely Judy ("Judy's gross eats") is this months Kitchen of the month for the Bread Baking Babes challenge. And I love her delicious choice that is perfect for this autumn: Pumpkin cornmeal bread. You can make the bread the shape you like, or divide the dough in rolls. I used half the amount of the original recipe and turned the dough into 12 rolls. And that was the only bad thing about it... I should have made double that amount! They are delicious and have a little sort of bite from the cornmeal. I used honey instead of molasses. We all loved them here.

And you will love them too, bake along with us and become our Bread Baking Buddy. Bake and make some pictures, then send your baking story to Judy (jahunt22 dot gmail dot com) and she'll add you to the round-up. Deadline the 29th of this month. So get baking!!

Pumpkin Cornmeal Bread

Yield:  1 loaf or 12 dinner rolls

(PRINT recipe)

1 tsp active dry yeast

pinch of sugar

124 g lukewarm water

124 g lukewarm buttermilk

45 g  melted butter or oil

40 g honey

70 g pumpkin purée (either canned or homemade)

1 tsp salt

70 g fine- or medium-grind yellow cornmeal

60 g medium rye flour

About 360 g bread flour

In a large bowl, combine yeast, sugar, salt, cornmeal, and rye flour. Whisk to mix well.

Add warm water, buttermilk, melted butter/oil, honey, and pumpkin purée.  Beat until smooth (1 to 2 minutes) using either a whisk or the paddle attachment on a mixer.

Add the unbleached all-purpose flour or bread flour, 70 g at a time, until it becomes a soft dough. Knead until smooth and slightly tacky, either by hand or with a dough hook.

Place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat the top; cover with plastic wrap.  Let rise at room temperature until double, about 1 ½ to 2 hours, depending on how warm it is.

Turn onto work surface and divide the dough into 12 equal round portions for the rolls or 1 large round for the loaf.  Place on parchment-lined baking pan, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rise at room temperature until doubled, about 45 minutes.

Place on parchment-lined baking pan, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rise at room temperature until doubled, about 20 minutes, or place in refrigerator for 2 hours to overnight.

Twenty minutes before baking, heat the oven to 180ºC, using a baking stone, if you wish.  While the oven is heating, brush the tops with melted butter.

Bake in the center of the preheated oven until golden brown:  40-45 minutes for loaves or 15 to 18 minutes for rolls.  Remove from oven, let cool on rack until completely cool.

(adapted from Bread for All Seasons by Beth Hensperger)

BBBabes: 2 starters, 1 mouthmask & 0 goggles

This month a recipe from our Bread Baking Babe extraordinair Cathy ("Bread Experience") chose a rye bread for us to bake, with two starters. Fortunately I still have a wheat starter on stand by, so I used that and fed it with rye flour. The other starts is a poolish, so that's even easier. O yes rye flour... I must say I hardly ever use it anymore, because I'm just not a fan of it, but most of all, because I think it might cause me some allergic reaction. So I forgot to take a precausionary measurement, to put on my mouthmask. It came to me when I was making the starter... ah well, so I thought, it's just a little bit I need, it'll be OK.

Did I mention I am probably allergic to ryeflour? As I made the prepararions before I went to bed, It took me several hours to get back to normal. Sinuses blokked, eyes red, itchy and watering.. well I think I can safely say: rye flour in the air give me an allergic reaction. I not only will need my mouthmask, but some goggles too next time. Which means I can't ever visit a bakery (not the shop, but where they bake) or attend a workshop, without looking like a surgeon on her way to the swiming pool. Bummer!

But back to the bread, it was quite a dense crumb, but I totally expect that when using a lot of rye flour in bread, so that's either to like or not. I don't, husband does. It didn't rise very much, which is also to be expected with less gluten in the bread. The original recept calls for light rye flour, I used half white and half whole rye flour. I adapted that in the recipe below. This is a ring shaped loaf, I like to bake recipes in their traditional form, but it's a bit awkward to get slices from the ring loaf and fit them in a lunchbox. Thanks Cathy for this recipe, I always like baking these bread that are traditional for a country or region. Next time I just should take precautions! Wanna bake along? Become our Bread Baking Buddy and earn a nice BBBuddy Badge to add to your post if wanted. Bake, tell us about it and send it to Cathy. She'll put the entries together in a post the first week of October. Latest entry date is the 29th of September. Get your goggles out (if needed) and bake some rye with us. Happy baking!

Swiss Rye Ring/Brasciadela/Kantonsbrot Graubünden

Yield: 2 (575 g) loaves

(PRINT recipe)

Rye %:  69%

Stages: rye sponge, wheat poolish, final dough

Leaven: rye sour culture, instant yeast

Time: 13-15 hrs

Hands-in time: 30-35 min.

Rye Sponge:

150 g whole rye flour

150 g white rye flour

200 g luke warm water

20 g (rye) sour culture

-Combine the ingredients by hand into a stiff dough, cover and ferment at 21°C until doubled in volume 10-12 hours or overnight.

Wheat Poolish:

200 g bread flour

200 g cold water

8 g instant yeast

-Mix the poolish ingredients by hand, cover and refrigerate 10-12 hours or overnight.

Final Dough:

520 g rye sponge

408 g wheat poolish

60 g whole  rye flour

260 g white rye flour

82 g bread flour

170 g warm water (40ºC)

20 g salt

In the mixer, combine the final dough ingredients and use the dough hook at low (KA2) speed to mix into a stiff, slightly sticky dough that leaves the sides of the bowl and gathers around the hook, 6-8 minutes. Cover the dough and bulk ferment at room temperature until doubled in volume, 60-75 minutes.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it into two pieces weighing about 750 g each. Form each piece into an oblong about 45 cm long and 5 cm in diameter. Shape each into a ring, wetting the ends to seal, and place on a well-floured peel, if using a baking stone, or parchment-lined sheet pan.

Cover and proof at room temperature until the breads have visibly expanded and surface shows cracks or broken bubbles.

Preheat the oven to 250°C with the baking surface in the middle and a steam pan on a lower shelf. Dock the surface of each loaf thoroughly and evenly to a depth of at least 0.6 cm. with a fork, chopstick or docking wheel.

Bake with steam 15 minutes, then remove the steam pan, reduce the temperature to 210°C and bake until the loaves thump when tapped with a finger and the internal temperature is at least 92°C, about 30 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool thoroughly before slicing.

(adapted from: Stanley Ginsberg http://theryebaker.com/swiss-rye-ring/#more-335)

Bread Baking Babes bake with beans

And I'm here for another episode of the baking adventures of the Bread Baking Babes, this time with a recipe chosen by our lovely babe Kelly ("A messy kitchen").
It's a bread that I've baked before, but so delicious to bake time and time again, you can make your daily sandwiches and put anything you like on it. The bread itself has a soft crumb because of the mashed cooked white beans. So you have veggies in your bread too! This soft bread is much appreciated in our home (although they really do eat any bread I make). And this is a very nice way to make it softer without any weird additives. You can soak and cook dried beans, or just buy a can/jar with cooked beans. And of course a great way to use up some left over beans from your meal. This bread is made with white beans, my hunch is that's for keeping it a light colour, but you could use any bean you want (well not like runner beans).
Have a go and bake along with us and treat your family with this beautiful loaf. Become our Bread Baking Buddy, check out the details on Kelly's blog. Send your findings, details about the bread to Kelly, she's our Kitchen of the month, deadline 29th of this month. Happy baking!

Velvety Bean Bread

(makes 2 small loaves or one large)

(PRINT recipe)

2 tsp active dry yeast

250 g lukewarm water

200 g drained cooked or canned navy beans, room temp (or white beans or cannellini beans)

130 g whole wheat flour

1 TBsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

± 320 g bread flour (more or less depending on the moisture in the beans)

Dissolve yeast in water.  Process beans until smooth, transfer to a large bowl or stand mixer.  Stir yeast mixture into beans.  Add the whole wheat flour and stir for one minute, in one direction, to develop the dough.  Add the oil and salt and stir them in.  Add 120 g of the bread flour and stir in.  Add the remaining flour and knead in with a dough hook, or work in and knead by hand for about 5 minutes, until smooth.

Place dough in a bowl, cover, and let rise for 3 hours, or until almost doubled in volume.

Turn out dough and divide in half.  Butter two small bread pans.  Form each portion of dough into a loaf and place seam side down in the pans.  (or use one large tin)

Cover with lightly greased plastic and let the dough rise.  Check at 1 hour and continue to proof if needed.

Preheat oven to 200ºC, have a spray bottle or small cup of water ready for steam.  Slash each loaf lengthwise, place in oven and bake for 5 minutes, adding steam at the start of the baking.  Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 180ºC and bake for 25 minutes until rich brown with a matte finish.  Turn the loaves out and check for doneness. Finish cooling on a wire rack before slicing.

(recipe: “Home Baking” - Jeffrey Alford & Naomi Duguid )

Bake a purse! BBB in June

Another month with another Middle Eastern recipe for the Bread Baking Babes to bake; thanks Karen ("Bake my day!") for this lovely choice. The fun bread shape looks like a purse and is meant to carry around after buying it from a street cart in Lebanon that sells these. You can bake them yourself and please feel free to parade in your house and/or street! Bake these in a weekend and eat them for dinner or take them on a picnic! Bake with us, taste, post about them en sent your details and findings to Karen (bakemyday(at)gmail(dot)com) and become our Bread Baking Buddy!! Enter before the 30th of this month!

Kaak bread (a Lebanese bread with sesame seeds)

(makes 6 large Kaak)

(PRINT recipe) 

dough:

235 g milk

230 g water

2 TBsp olive oil

1 ½ TBsp sugar

1 ½ tsp salt

1 TBsp instant dry yeast

135 g whole wheat flour

490 gr all purpose flour, you may need a little more, but don’t add too much flour

Topping:

1 egg for egg wash

1 TBsp sesame seeds per kaak

You will also need lined baking sheets

Mix all the dough ingrdients in a standmixer bowl and knead it until souple dough. What you'll be looking for is a malleable non-sticky dough.

Shaping; divide dough into 5 parts of 200 g (or make smaller ones about 100 g each) and ball up. The last part of dough will be smaller, but you add all the cut out circles to that one, so it’ll be about the same size. Let rest to relax and using a dough pin roll each ball into a circle approx. 18 cm diam., about 1 1/2 cm.

Place the shaped breads on lined baking sheets, be careful not to stretch the dough. Use a large cookie cutter to cut out a circle near the top to form the "handle". and loosely cover to rise another 25-30 minutes. Add all the cut-out circles to the last smaller piece of dough and shape this one like a purse without cutting a whole (make a hole with your finger and carefully open it up. Or do it as it’s done in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdxMY-53pMU )

Egg wash the breads, sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake for ±15-18 minutes or until golden and puffed in a pre-heated oven 200-220°C. I think they will benefit from a bit of steam in your oven. Use your preferred method; either ice cubes, boiling water in a heated pan... bake on a stone...

Let them cool on a wire rack. You can eat them like they are or make a horizontal slit in the bottom part of the purse, which you can fill with whatever your fancy.

We stuffed them with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and some vegetable "sausages"