[0:01]Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with Holiday Star Bread. That's right. You're going to learn how to make star bread from someone who's only made it once. Which is both a disclaimer and a flex, since I thought this came out really, really well. And I'm very confident your first attempt will be just as successful. And to get started, the first thing we'll do is make our dough, which starts with a couple teaspoons of yeast, which we will combine with some warm water, as well as some warm milk. And when we say warm in the dough business, we're talking like 100, 110 degrees. Okay, so you feel like hot bath water basically. And what we'll do is let the yeast activate for about 15 minutes before we add the rest of the ingredients, which will include a little bit of sugar, as well as some ground cardamom. And then we'll need one beaten egg, as well as a very generous amount of melted butter. And then we'll finish up with some all-purpose flour, and of course, a little bit of salt. And once everything's in, we'll grab our dough hook, and we will knead this for about 5 minutes or so. Or until we formed a very smooth, very soft, fairly elastic dough. And by the way, you might need to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple times, since some of that butter might stick and not get mixed in. But anyway, after about 5 minutes of kneading, our dough should look something like this. At which point we'll go ahead and pull that off the mixer and scrape down the hook. And then according to best practices, we're supposed to transfer this into a clean grease bowl. But I think we can get away with just cleaning off the sides with a spatula. And even though the culinary instructor's not going to be crazy about that, trust me, it's going to work. Although we will appease them a little bit, and after we have that cleaned up, we will dab our hands with a little bit of water and give that dough a quick shape into a ball with some kind of relatively smooth surface. And that's it. As usual, we will cover that up and let it rise in a warm spot for a couple hours, or until it doubles in size. And while we're waiting, we can mix up the other two things we're going to need, which will be some cinnamon sugar, which we will make by mixing some cinnamon into some sugar. And then we'll also need a butter egg wash, which we will create by mixing a couple tablespoons of melted butter into an egg. And by the way, you can wait to make this one until your dough is pretty much fully risen. And that's it. We'll set that aside and go back and check our dough, which like I said, should be doubled in size. And you know the test, if we poke it with some flour fingers, it sort of deflates and holds the marks. Okay, if the marks spring back, let it go. But since that was perfect, we can go ahead and transfer that onto a floured surface, and dust a little flour over the top before we flatten that into some kind of uniform disk. And the reason it's nice if we get something uniform is because we're going to want to divide this into four equal pieces. And something like a uniform circle is going to be way easier to divide than like a weird trapezoid. And then for the next step, we'll take a portion of dough, and we'll shape it back into a nice round ball, and using enough flour so it doesn't stick, we'll roll that out into a circle, about 11 or 12 inches across. And I know what you're thinking, that doesn't really look like a circle. But you know what, that is okay. Since what we're going to do once we get that to the approximate size is transfer that onto a piece of parchment paper. And if you start with a round ball of dough, it's always going to want to stay in a round shape. So you'll see that's going to be very easy to press and pull and reshape into almost a perfect circle. Or at least close enough for star bread. And that's it once our first layer of dough is formed, we will paint that very generously with our butter and egg mixture, covering that almost all the way to the edge. At which point we will sprinkle over a nice layer of our cinnamon sugar. Okay, at least a nice generous tablespoon or so. And then if you're using them, and I hope you are, we will scatter over some dried fruit and chopped nuts. And I went with dried cranberry and golden raisin, as well as some almond and pistachio. And I will mention this again, but I probably should have gone closer to the edges. All right, in the final product, I didn't get as much fruit and nut in the outside pieces as I wanted. But anyway, once that's scattered over, we will roll out our second piece of dough and press that evenly over the top. At which point we'll repeat the exact same process with our butter egg mixture being brushed down first, followed by our cinnamon sugar, and then our fruits and nuts. And since we have four portions of dough, we will do three layers of our filling before we finish with the last round of dough on top. And of course, use any kind of dried fruit and nuts you want. Right, this is your chance to get creative. I mean, you are after all the Father Christmas of your star bread business. And there are so many great things that would work in this, depending on what you're into. But no matter what you use, as I touched on earlier, we should probably apply our filling almost all the way to the edge, just so we hopefully get some of that goodness in every bite. But anyway, once we finished that last layer and our final piece of dough is placed over the top, we're going to take a pastry cutter or a glass, or something similar about 3 inches across, and we're going to mark the dough right in the middle, since that's where we're going to start our cuts. Oh, and we're just marking the dough, so be careful not to cut into the dough. And then we'll use a bench scraper or a pizza cutter, or just a knife to divide this into quarters, since ultimately, we want to get 16 cuts total. Which means all we have to do is divide those quarter sections into two, and then cut each of those pieces into two, which if everything goes according to plan, should give us 16 fairly even strips, which are now ready to twist. Oh, and I didn't do it, but it's probably not a bad idea to refrigerate this before we do these cuts and twists. Since that will firm up the butter a little bit and make things a little easier to work with. But either way, what we'll do is grab two strips, and we will twist them away from each other. Right, not towards each other, away from each other, like two or three times, or whatever looks good to you, before we press and pinch the end together into hopefully some kind of pointy finish. And I'm sure you've heard me say it a million times, when it comes to things like this, the first one is always the worst one. And as you work your way around, by the eighth one, you're going to have this down pat. And if you're worried these need to be perfect, don't be. Right, first of all, there's no way you're going to get them perfect. But like pretty much all shape breads, once this bakes up, you are not going to notice any of the irregularities, and you will probably be shocked by how nicely it comes out. Which by the way is what's so cool about this technique. Even if you're a beginner and you've never done it before, the final appearance looks like you totally know what you're doing, and I think whoever you share this with is going to be very impressed. But anyway, we'll do that eight times total before we slide the parchment onto a pan. And I'm using a round pizza pan, but just a standard 13x18 baking sheet would be fine. And then I'm going to go ahead and trim off the parchment, so it looks neater and hopefully cooks nice and evenly. But anyway, once that's trimmed, we'll cover this with a towel, and we will let this proof at room temp for about 45 minutes, or until it looks and feels a little bit puffy. And once that happens, we'll give this a brushing with our egg wash and butter mixture. And check it out while doing this, a cranberry mysteriously appears in the center, as if by magic. So that piece must have been on the bottom of this ramekin. And I felt like that was something you needed to see. And by the way, please egg wash the entire surface. Alright, tan lines are fine on nude beaches, but not on baked goods. And if you only paint the top half, like a lot of people do, you're going to get light parts and dark parts, which I don't like the appearance of. So please brush thoroughly and thoughtfully. And that's it. This is now ready to transfer into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until it's beautifully browned and hopefully looks like this. Oh yeah, a beautiful star is born. And then if you have one, as soon as this comes out of the oven, I like to carefully transfer this onto a cooling rack, just so the bottom doesn't steam and this cools down a little quicker. And yes, I should have removed the parchment also, so let me go ahead and do that now. And that's it. All we have to do is let this cool down to room temp before we try to serve it up. And before we do, because we're calling it Holiday Star Bread, we should probably give it a little dusting of powdered sugar for that wintery Wonderland look. But not too much. We don't want to cover up all our gorgeous dough work. Which reminds me, if you did want to cover this completely with powdered sugar, that would turn this star bread into snowflake bread. So if you'd rather do that, feel free. And once that was dusted, I transferred it onto a serving platter, and garnish with a little bit of rosemary and cranberry to make it look even more festive. And then I went ahead and tore off a piece, and I took a nice big bite before placing this on a plate so I can show you what's going on.
[10:19]And that my friends, really was incredible. Right, we have a fairly rich, beautifully buttery, slightly sweet dough with what I thought was a nice amount of fruits and nuts. Except, as I said, right at the end, where we pinched those tips together. Okay, since I didn't do the filling all the way to the edges, that part didn't have a lot of filling as in no filling. But besides that, I really loved how this came out. And by the way, this will work with any dough and any fillings. Since really what I'm showing you here is a technique. But no matter what dough you choose or what fillings you pick, this really is an impressive bread to serve, especially during the holidays. Which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon. So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy!
