Delicious Hawaiian Bread: Mastering the Recipe

This recipe comes from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. In the recipe notes I learned that what we know as Hawaiian bread is actually Portuguese, as the Hawaiians got the bread from the Portuguese.

The bread starts with a preferment that is allowed to ripen for 90 minutes.

While the preferment ripened, I gathered my mise en place. I have tried to avoid substitutions in most of the recipes I’ve written about, but I made 3 in this bread: I substituted coconut oil for vegetable shortening, and I substituted lemon and orange essential oils for their respective extracts. I used 5-6 drops of each of the essential oils rather than the teaspoon of each extract called for in the recipe, and the flavors were perfect.

I combined the dry ingredients with the fats and beat the mixture in my KitchenAid mixer until it was sandy in texture.

I mixed in the wet ingredients, then added a bit more flour since the dough seemed quite soft. I realized at this point that I had missed the instruction to not add in all the water at once. Oops.

I intended to knead the dough in my stand mixer, but I ended up kneading it by hand as that allowed me to better gauge the dough’s texture and incorporate additional flour to get to the right texture.

I let the dough rise for 2 hours.

I divided the dough in two, then shaped half to fit in a loaf tin and half as a round, since this is the traditional shape for this bread. The shaped dough rose for 3 hours, until they filled the pans.

I brushed the top of each dough with egg wash, then baked the loaves. I was shocked at how dark these breads baked up! I was glad the recipe warned me about the browning, since I might have pulled them out of the oven too soon if I hadn’t been prepared.

The bread is delicious and beautiful. The crust is very brown, but thin and soft, and the bread inside is a beautiful creamy colour. The texture is of the bread is fine-grained and soft, but dryer than many home-baked bread recipes. Because of this the bread toasts up beautifully.

I used this bread to make cucmber sandwiches for my birthday tea party. The sweet bread was a perfect compliment for the delicate flavor of the cucumber and the tanginess of the cream cheese.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.