Today's Musing is a recipe that I tried for the first time. It turned out pretty well for a first try and tasted wonderful. An added bonus is that it is also a whole grain recipe, using whole wheat flour as an ingredient. I used a commercially available fresh pesto sauce that is sold fresh and refrigerated at Whole Foods. I really like this product, and use this pesto in a variety of recipes from roasted potatoes, with pasta and to make garlic bread. I thought I would try using it for this recipe. The flavor of this bread was GREAT. However, this particular pesto has a significant amount of olive oil, which posed a bit of a problem when I was working to braid the bread. A little too much of a good thing (olive oil) made it harder to manipulate and position the braids. As a result, my braiding is not as tight and well defined as I would like. Next time, I will opt for a pesto that is a little drier with less oil in it. That said, this bread was delicious.
The link below is the recipe I used for inspiration. I deviated from the recipe's preparation by mixing the dough in my bread machine's dough cycle. The first rise was done in the bread machine. I also used organic flour. Making the roll, slashing, braiding and final rise were done as pictured in the recipe below. I used a shallow Corningware pan instead of a springform or cake pan. I think I will try a pie or quiche plate next time to see if results are different. I think that the coiled braid could even be baked on a jelly roll pan.
The recipe I found at the link below has great pictures to introduce you to slashing and braiding techniques. Don't be intimidated! It's not as hard as it looks, and the results are impressive. Keep on baking! The more practice you get with handling dough, the better your breads will look.
http://goodfoodnotmuchtime.com/2012/11/20/pesto-braid-bread-for-soup-night/