Sunflower shaped sweet bread

by | Nov 10, 2013 | Breads, buns & biscuits

This sweet bread is not only breathtakingly beautiful, but its taste is also heavenly. It isn’t as difficult to prepare it as it seems.

Sunflower_challach_7

Ingredients:

For the dough:

  • 660 g (~5 1/4 cups) flour
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 50 ml (~3 1/2 tbsp) oil
  • 100 g (~1/2 cup) melted butter
  • 1,5 tsp. salt
  • 40 g fresh yeast (4 tsp dry yeast)
  • 300 ml (~1 1/4 cups) lukewarm milk

For spreading the dough:

  • 70 g (~1/3 cup) melted butter
  • 1 tbsp. sugar
  • seeds of a vanilla bean

For the topping:

  • 1 egg, whisked
  • flaxseeds (or sesame seeds, or sunflower seeds)

Dissolve yeast with a little sugar in lukewarm milk.

In a bowl mix up the flour, egg yolks, sugar, oil, melted butter, salt, yeast and the milk, and knead the dough (using a hand mixer with kneaders or a kneading machine) until it is soft, smooth and elastic.

Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 40 minutes.

Take a piece of parchment paper and cover the back of a bigger baking pan.

Melt the butter with the sugar and the vanilla seeds.

After 40 minutes knead the dough again, and divide it into two equal parts.

Take one of the two parts and cut into 5 pieces and round them.

Roll the first piece into a circle (diameter 22-23 cm), put on the parchment paper and spread it with the melted butter.

Roll the second piece of dough into a circle, put on the first one and spread it with butter.

Repeat this process in case of the 3rd and 4th pieces.

Roll the 5th dough ball into a bigger circle in order to also cover the side of the four layers.

Cut the middle of the dough into 8 parts, but don’t cut the edges.

Sunflower_challach_1

Turn out the slices.

Sunflower_challach_2

Take the other half of the dough, cut off 1/4 and round it.

Divide the remaining dough into 5 equal parts and round them.

Roll the first ball into a circle (diameter 15-16 cm) and put in the middle of the first five layers.

Spread it with butter.

Dough ball no.3, 4, 5: roll them  out, put them in layers and spread them with butter (except layer 5).

Slice the dough into 8 parts.

Turn them out. These slices must be placed between the petals of the first layer.

Sunflower_challach_3

Sunflower_challach_4

Take the last dough ball and roll it out to cover the middle of the flower.

Spread the whole top with egg and sprinkle flaxseeds in the middle.

Sunflower_challach_5

Sunflower_challach_6

Let it rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 356°F.

Bake it for 30-35 minutes.

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Hungarian cottage cheese

This is what Hungarian túró looks like

You often ask me what kind of cottage cheese (or curd cheese or farmer's cheese - call it what you want) I use in the recipes. In Hungary the store-bought cottage cheese is dry and crumbly as you can see in the picture. So if a recipe calls for túró, I mean this type. If you can't obtain túró, you can try to make your own from whole milk. Click on the link below.

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In Hungary metric units are in use, all the recipes on this website are based on this system, so a kitchen scale is necessary. Since I’m not familiar with cup as a measurement unit, I convert grams to cups by using an online converter. The values in brackets, therefore, are only approximate volumes, so, please, double-check them before you start cooking.

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