Sweet Spring Bread

Happy Easter Sunday Everyone!!
Since I am doing the month long baking marathon, I thought why not extend the baking theme to the weekends too and post some of the bakes that I made from my cookbooks. This way I can link them to Valli's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge' and clear some of my baking recipes too.

I was planning to bake this Sweet Spring Cake on the first day of Spring, i.e., March 20, but we had a snow storm that day and it didn't really feel like Spring, so I pushed it until this past week when finally we got a little glimpse of Spring. It went back to being chilly and cold again, but at least there's hope that it will get better soon.

This recipe is from King Arthur Catalog.They made them in cute little rectangular baking pans, but I made the loaves in 1 8½"x4½" and 2 mini loaf pans. This is a rich bread with eggs, sugar and butter in it. I subbed the eggs with egg replacer and the bread turned out great.

This bread has a streusel topping that gave it a nice sweet taste. It was not too soft and not to dense -- reminded me of fruit cakes in India (I think Brittania brand still makes these) we used to eat growing up. The use of mixed dried fruit makes this bread taste almost like Christmas cake :-)

Ingredients:

Dough:

All purpose flour - 2½cups

Wholewheat flour - 1½cups (or use 4 cups of All purpose flour)
Instant Yeast - 2tsp
Sugar - ⅓cup
Salt - 1tsp
Unsalted Butter - 4tbsp
Milk - 1cup
Eggs** - 2 large + 1 yolk (reserve the white for glaze).
Orange Oil or Fiori di Sicilia - ¼tsp
Mixed Dried fruit - 1cup (I used chopped dried apricots, cherries and raisins)

For the Topping:
Sugar - ¼cup
All purpose flour - ⅓cup
Unsalted Butter - 2tbsp

** I used 2tbsp egg replacer whisked in 6tbsp water for the 2 eggs and 1tbsp Soy milk for the white used for the glaze.

Method:

• Melt the butter along with milk in a small saucepan. Let the mixture cool to lukewarm.
• Combine the milk mixture with the remaining dough ingredients, except the dried fruit, and mix and knead to form a soft dough.
• Knead in the fruit.
• Cover and let the dough rise, for 1½hours, or until it becomes puffy and nearly doubles in volume.
• Deflate the dough. Divide it in half and shape each half into a 8" log. Place the logs in 2 greased 8½"x4½" loaf pans.
• Let rise, covered, for about 1½hours, till crowned about 1" over the rims of the pans. Just before the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.
• Beat the reserved egg white and brush over the tops of the loaves (in my case, I brushed the m with soy milk).
• Mix the topping ingredients until crumbly and sprinkle on top.
• Bake the bread for 25~30 minutes or lightly browned.
• Remove from the oven, turn out of the pans and cool completely on a rack.

Linking this to Valli's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge: April -- Week 1'.