Portuguese Sweet Bread

Portuguese Desserts are often seasoned with spices such as vanilla and cinnamon...This Cuisine has so many wonderful dishes and the choice is enormous...so after reading a number of recipe books and with a little bit of google search, I finally decided to make the famous Portuguese Sweet Bread. The bread is usually served simply with butter and is sometimes eaten with meals, (breakfast in particular) but often as a dessert.

The recipe is from here  The recipe was for the bread machine but since i dont have one, i baked it in the oven. I made the bread eggless, used half wheat flour and half all purpose flour and also added a dash of cinnamon... 

Priya, thank you for hosting such a wonderful event, I definitely learnt a few new things and we thouroughly enjoyed this sweet bread.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup - whole wheat flour

1  1/2 cup - all purpose flour (maida)

1 cup + 2tbsp - warm low fat milk

2 tbsp - melted butter 

1/3 cup - castor sugar

3/4 tsp - salt

2 1/2 tsp - dried yeast

1 tsp - cinnamon

oil to grease 

Method  

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degree C and grease a loaf pan.
2. In a bowl, mix together the flours, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Add the melted butter and rub until it resembles fine bread crumbs.
3. In another bowl, add the milk and yeast and mix. Leave in a warm place until frothy (approx 10-15 minutes)
4. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and knead well.
5. Place the dough in a well greased bowl and knead again for a minute. Cover with a cling film and leave it to rise in a warm place (approx 1 1/2- 2 hrs)
6. Knead lightly on a floured surface, give a rectangular shape and place it in the greased loaf pan and cover with a cling film and leave it to rise again in a warm place. ( approx 1 hr)
7. Place the loaf pan in the centre of the preheated oven and bake for abt 10-15 minutes or till the top is nicely browned or until a toothpick inserted through the centre of the loaf comes out clean.
8. Cool the loaf in the pan for a couple of minutes and brush the top with a little melted butter. Transfer to a wire rack. Cool completely before slicing.

The bread was sweet and soft with a lovely cinnamon flavour...

Went really well with a cup of tea...

This goes straight to priya's AWED Portuguese event and to DK's AWED page

Enjoy!