Bread Machine Spelt Cardamom Bread (two ways)
This spelt cardamom bread offers your run of the mill bread a unique little twist.
Cardamom is popular in baked goods here in Sweden. Everyone and his uncle seems to have tried the famous cardamom buns (apart from me. With good reason: my logical brain sucks and I am concerned I can’t get the twisting right).
Cardamom has a very unique taste, with only a small quantity offering up a hit of a somewhat exotic flavour. It is particularly used here during Christmas baking season, when it’s thrown into breads, cakes, glögg and many other treats.
I haven’t used cardamom a great deal but did make a lovely cardamom and blueberry cake for my Baking with Spelt e-book (in fact, it took pride of place on the cover).
I made my spelt cardamom bread in a bread machine. Although I haven’t tried to make this recipe by hand, I don’t see why you couldn’t. All you would need to do is adapt the beginning of the dough making process to a more traditional method.
I decided to make two kinds of spelt cardamom bread: one large loaf and five mini versions. Both are plaited but the large one has a vanilla drizzle frosting and a sprinkling of sliced almonds, whereas the smaller ones have almonds and pearl sugar. Both were awesome, but I particularly enjoyed the heavy dollop of vanilla frosting and soft bread on the larger version.
Spelt Cardamom Bread (made two ways)
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 250ml milk
- 50g butter
- 400g spelt flour (see notes)
- 50g sugar
- 1 teaspoon cardamom powder
- 7g dried yeast
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 beaten egg (for an egg-wash before baking)
Additional Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- icing sugar (enough to make a very thick paste)
- sliced almonds
- pearl sugar
Instructions
- Add all dough ingredients to your bread maker (in the order I've laid out) and set the machine to make dough. When dough is ready, pre-heat the oven to 175°C.
Small Cardamom Breads (see notes)
- Divide the dough into 10 equal parts. Take each part and divide into three. Roll each bit out until it is a thin rope of around 15cm in length. Take the three parts, pinch them together at the top and plait together. Tuck both ends under. Continue with the remaining 9 bits of dough so that you have ten plaited dough shapes.
- Place the dough shapes on a large oven tray lined with baking paper (allowing space in between). Brush over the egg and sprinkle with sliced almonds and pear sugar. Bake for around 12 minutes, just until they are golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve warm.
Large Cardamom Braid (see notes)
- Divide the dough into 3 equal parts. Roll each bit out until it is a thick rope of around 25cm in length. Take the three ropes, pinch them together at the top and plait together. Tuck both ends under.
- Place the plait on a large oven tray lined with baking paper. Brush over the egg. Bake for around 15-20 minutes, just until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- For the drizzle: mix the milk and vanilla together and add just as much icing sugar to make a thick (slow dripping) paste. Drizzle along the lines of the plaited loaf. Sprinkle with sliced almonds and slice. Enjoy!
Notes
- I use metric measurements in my recipes. If you prefer imperial (cup) measurements, Cook it Simply offer a handy conversion tool.
- You can use plain (all purpose flour) if you prefer. Just add an extra 20g flour (using a total of 420g).
