Celery Bread

Alex Goh has never fail to amaze me with his lovely breads, and he has done it again with this Celery Bread. If you have some celery in your refrigerator, forget about your stir-fry, just this once, make this bread instead. Or buy some celery and make this bread! You would be glad you did!

Full recipe makes 2 lovely loaves of Celery Bread.

This recipe uses the gelatinized starter, where the starter is mixed and left to refrigerate for at least 12 hours before it is mixed into the rest of the ingredients for the dough.

Some celery is blended with a little water to form a thin puree. According to the recipe, he says to add in the celery juice, which I'm not sure whether he meant only the juice, in this case, the puree needs to be strained to get the juice. Or he meant the whole blended puree, which is rather watery. Alex Goh's recipes are good, but his instructions are sometimes very vague, with no further explanations. So I have used the whole blended puree, why waste the good nutritious celery pulps? I've added it to the ingredients and proceed with the making of the bread.

There's chopped celery and chopped ham too. 

Both are kneaded into the dough before the first rise.

The risen dough.

Divide the dough into two, flatten them out to the length of the pans, roll them up tightly and place in the prepared greased baking loaf pans. Cover with greased cling wrap and left to rise until nearly doubled in size.

Bake in a preheated oven at 190C for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

Lovely  bread, could not wait to slice it! 

The texture of the bread is just wonderful. It is soft, moist, and very tasty! It has the light fragrance and crunch from the chopped celery and the ham, of course it makes anything tastes delicious!

Look at how soft the slices are! We finished the two loaves by the third day, and they are just as soft. Do not keep this bread for long at room temperature since it has chopped ham. 

Makes a very good sandwich bread. Yum! A definite keeper recipe! 

**notes : I have made some changes to the shaping of the dough (refer to my instructions below). Alex Goh has divided the dough into 8 small pieces and placed 4 pieces of rolled-up dough in each loaf pan. For convenience, I have however divided the dough into two, simply rolled them up and place each one in each loaf pan.

Celery Bread

(adapted from "Magic Bread", Alex Goh)

(A) : For the gelatinized dough

100gm bread flour

70gm boiling water

(B)

325gm bread flour

75gm plain flour

15gm milk powder

50gm sugar

8gm salt

8gm instant yeast

(C)

130gm celery + 60gm water ) blend till fine

90gm cold water

30gm cold egg

(D)

40gm butter

(E) 

50gm diced celery

50gm diced ham

1. Blend the celery with 60gm of water until pureed. (It will be a thin puree).
2. To prepare the gelatinized dough (A) : pour the boiling water onto the flour, mix until well-blended to form dough. Cover and set aside to cool. Refrigerate for at least 12 hours.
3. Mix all the ingredients from (B) until well blended. Add ingredients (C) ; cold water, egg and blended celery. Knead to form rough dough. 
4. Add in butter (D) and knead to form elastic dough. Lastly, add in the diced celery and diced ham (E), knead gently until the ingredients are evenly incorporated into the dough.
5. Place dough in a large oiled bowl, turn dough so that the oiled side is facing up. Cover loosely with greased cling wrap, and let it proof for 40 minutes, or until doubled in size. 
6. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and gently deflate dough. Divide the dough into 2 equal-sized pieces and mould each piece into a round. Cover with greased cling wrap and let rest for 10 minutes.
7. Working with one piece of round dough at a time, flatten and spread out the dough with your hands, roughly to the length of the baking pan, roll it up tightly like a swiss roll. Press the seams to seal, neaten the two sides by tucking a little of the two sides under the dough, and press the seams to seal. 
8. Place dough in greased baking pan, cover loosely with greased cling wrap and leave to proof for 50 minutes or until dough is nearly doubled in size. 
9. Preheat the oven at 190C, about 20 minutes before the baking time. Bake the loaves until golden brown, about 30 minutes.
10. Remove loaves from pan and cool completely on cooling rack.

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I'm linking this post with :

"My Treasured Recipes - Alex Goh (Jun/July 2014)" hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders and co-hosted by Charmaine of Mimi Bakery House.

Cook-Your-Books #14 @ Kitchen Flavours