Monday, July 21, 2014

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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28 comments:

  1. welcome home! :D i remember seeing this celery bread too but didnt notice about the ham ..a little intriguing tho about the celery but i know his recipes are very good :)

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  2. Bread looks so soft and lovely.
    Deepa

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  3. This looks wonderful!! I bet it was. Blessings, Catherine

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  4. Interesting bread, I love the addition of ham!

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  5. Hi Joyce,
    I don't know what rock I live under but I have never heard of celery bread, ever until now of course, lol...I must admit, I'm not too fond of celery but the notion of using it as a puree in a bread is rather intriguing. And, just look at that heavenly bread! It's the perfect texture for a sandwich. What am I saying, it's like a sandwich with the ham in it too. Very clever recipe and beautifully done by you. Than you so much for sharing, Joyce....

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  6. What interesting looking bread!

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  7. Hi Joyce,
    What a wonderful idea to add celery! Thanks for sharing!

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  8. Hi Joyce, would love to try this bread with your strong recommendation. The bread looks soft and fluffy. Advisable to add some wholemeal flour?

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    1. Hi Kimmy,
      This bread is soft and really good. Highly recommend that you give it a try. I have not tried this with wholemeal flour. We prefer white breads in my house, so I always made white breads. I suppose you could sub some amount of the bread flour with wholemeal flour. Hope it works out for you.

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  9. Interesting combination to the otherwise plain bread. Your bread certainly looks soft and look at the beautiful and fine texture.

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  10. Hi Joyce,

    I remember this recipe from Alex Goh's book. I must say that he is very creative using the always stir-fry ingredient, celery to make bread. Today, I'm glad to witness that this recipe is truly good :D

    Zoe

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  11. Hi Joyce! Yum! I love celery. Never imagined that it could be baked in bread. I'm sure it is delicious since both loaves were all gone by day three!

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  12. Hi Joyce! This is an interesting bread!
    Look so good!

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  13. Hi Joyce, I'm still a "newbie" in baking breads ... while I know some people like to drink celery juice but I haven't tried that ... will bake this one day when I'm more confidence in bread baking ... using different methods ^-^!

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  14. I've gotten several wonderful bread/roll recipes from you Joyce and this is another one! Love the chopped celery and ham bits in this and the celery puree must add a wonderful flavor.

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  15. You have the best unique bread recipes, Joyce! I've never heard of celery bread, it sounds delicious! Sure beats plain white bread...

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  16. Hi Joyce , love the texture of the bread , celery in good in everything else so why not bread , I will give this a try , thanks for sharing :)

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  17. Such an interesting recipe...celery and ham...looks beautiful and very tasty...
    Thanks for sharing the recipe Joyce...enjoy your week :D

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  18. wow thats a great idea to use up celery. bread looks so perfectly done.

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  19. Wow! what a lovely bread recipe, I bet the celery gives it a nice subtle flavor, looks so soft and delicious!

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  20. That's an interesting flavor for bread! It looks soft and I bet it was delicious. I finally had success with whole wheat bread. Well, it's better than before and it tasted good. I'll have to blog about it in the future. I'm still working on texture and trying to find that more airy and soft recipe. There's room for improvement. Your bread always looks great. Have a nice week Joyce! :)

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  21. What a beautiful loaf of bread Joyce, and such an unusual flavour! You've made so many of Alex Goh's breads and they all look wonderful; sadly his books don't seem to be available here (North America) or anywhere else I've checked.

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  22. Wow - this is a truly unique bread. It sounds and looks so light and fluffy!

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  23. i love this! Never heard of it before but I can see how wonderful it would taste. Truly creative and perfectly baked

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  24. Celery in bread sure is unusual for me, but from the looks of it, it looks fantastic!

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  25. I love the add of celery in this gorgeous sandwich bread! I would have done the same and shaped them just the way you did.... much easier.

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  26. Joyce, it sounds interesting to have celery in bread. I will be glad to serve this healthy bread to my son!

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  27. Hi Joyce, Wow! thanks for sharing this awesome recipe ! Looks so yummy & healthy too . Bookmarking ... hehehehe ;)

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