Food for Thought: Holiday Bread

So not my best work but a tasty, colorful idea I just had to share. :)

It started when I fell in love with Astrid's Rainbow Pain de Mie over at Lunches Fit for a Kid. I wanted to make just a regular bread rather than pain de mie, however, a rainbow didn't go with my advent lunches I've been making so I figured why not use the same idea but with only red & green! Holiday bread!

Here's the bread recipe I used:

1 cup milk

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup warm water

2 packages active dry yeast

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp salt

1 cup of warm water

6-7 cups of King Arthur's Flour

(Sorry I did not take step-by-step pictures this time - I was making this with Little Miss right before my sister arrived for her visit so we were all over the place baking and cleaning, lol, but when you can always reference Astrid's post linked above for additional help!)

Heat 1 cup of milk and 2 tbsp butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat when the butter is melted. Set aside to cool.

Pour 1/2 cup of warm water into a small bowl. Slowly pour yeast into bowl while stirring. The constant stirring while adding the yeast will prevent the dry yeast from clumping. Set the bowl of yeast water aside for about 5 minutes while you work on the next 2 steps.
In two bowls, divide evenly into each the sugar, salt, and 1 cup of warm water. Mix. I then added food coloring to each bowl - red in one, green in the other. Mix.

Check the small saucepan of milk and butter. If the contents are warm to the touch, pour the liquid into the large bowl and mix.
Pour the yeast water divided evenly into each bowl. It is important that the batter is warm, not boiling hot. Hot liquid, such as the milk you heated up, will kill the dry yeast and prevent the bread from rising.

Begin mixing in the unbleached bread flour, one cup at a time, in each bowl. Once it becomes difficult to mix it with the wooden spoon, turn the dough out onto a floured board and begin to knead the dough. Continue adding more flour and kneading the flour into the dough until the dough is smooth, not sticky.

Cover the bread with a kitchen towel and let the dough rise at room temperature until double in size or about 1 hour.

Punch down dough. Turn it out onto a floured board and knead out all the bubbles for about 5 minutes. I then stacked the dough pieces ontop of one another. I divided into two even pieces. Rolled the dough up like a jellyroll. Pinched the seam closed. Pinched and tucked the edges under the loaf. (Much like Astrid's instructions linked at the top of this post.)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter two loaf pans. Set loaves in pans, cover with kitchen towel, and allow to rise until double in size or for about a half hour.

Bake bread for about 40-45 minutes or until golden brown. Remove bread from oven and allow to cool before cutting.

And there's my green and red holiday bread.

I didn't do a very clean job on my jelly rolling - so I plan to attack this again, rainbow style!!