bacon bread

The Italians have a tradition of combining meat to their bread, such as meat loaf, pizza, etc. One of these days, I intend to get round of adding cooked and shredded meat (such as pork roast) to my bread dough - I believe that the bread would taste very yummy.

One of my colleagues has a contact where we can order frozen meat at wholesale prices. As such, it is not uncommon to see some of us lugging home packets of frozen back bacon, frozen picnic ham, frozen sausages, etc on a frequent basis. *grin*

For this loaf of bread, I added back bacon to the bread dough. The bread tastes a little savoury (due to the inclusion of the back bacon). For a simple dinner, I microwaved frozen Muar otah on HIGH for 2 minutes, spread the otah onto a slice of the bacon bread (which I had buttered) and I toasted the bread in the oven at 160 degrees celsius for 10 minutes. It was delicious!

This recipe is adapted from a recipe for Italian pork bread that I came across in a recipe book called "Specialty breads in your bread machine".

INGREDIENTS

200g warm water

2 1/2 tbsp castor sugar

3/4 tsp salt

3/8 tsp freshly ground black peppercorn

2 5/8 cup bread flour

1 1/2 tsp instant dry yeast

3/4 cup back bacon (cut into medium-sized pieces)

METHOD

1. Place all the ingredients (except the bread flour, yeast and bacon) in the bucket of the breadmaker machine.

2. Add the bread flour, making sure that the wet ingredients are totally covered.

3. Add the yeast.

4. Place the bucket in the breadmaker machine and set to "dough" cycle. Start the cycle.

5. Five minutes into the dough cycle, open the lid of the breadmaker machine and add the bacon without stopping the cycle. Replace the lid and let the cycle continue.

6. When the cycle has been completed, turn the dough onto a floured board. Using floured hands, knead the dough 5 times.

7. Place the dough in a loaf pan that has been greased and lined with baking paper. Spread out the dough such that it touches the sides of the loaf pan.

8. Cover the loaf pan with a dry cloth and leave for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

9. Bake in an oven preheated to 180 degrees celsius for 30 minutes.