Braided Cranberry Bread

I will just tell you right now that I don't make up my own recipes. I can sing plenty of songs just fine, but I'm stumped when it comes to writing a tune of my own. Maybe I can change around the lyrics and harmonize instead of singing the melody, but it's still the same song, deep down. The same goes for me and food.

I love cooking food. It's what calms me down and fires me up. I stay awake into the wee hours of the morning, my eyes squinting with exhaustion as I peruse food blogs and try to ignore the stirrings they insight in my stomach.

I also have a particular fondness for photographing my food. That is, when it looks pretty (which isn't as often as I'd like), and when the sunlight is good enough that it can transform my poor little camera into a vessel for greatness. (This translates to me carrying my food outside, or upstairs to strategically place it on my bedroom's wide windowsill.) But I usually don't have much to do with these pictures except post them on Facebook and make my faraway friends jealous.

So the deal is this. I don't know how often I'm going to update this with (hopefully) lovely pictures of food. But I'm going to try, when the sunlight is right and the food gods are in my favor, to post as often as feels right. Sporadic, maybe, but right.

To get ahead of the game, I'm going to post the last few things I made and (somewhat decently) photographed. The first is this delicious Braided Cranberry Bread, which I made back in early December while I was home for winter break.




Braided Cranberry Bread
from Heart-Healthy Living

Ingredients
2-3/4 to 3 cups all-purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast
1/2 cup milk*
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh cranberries
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons finely chopped pecans
1-1/2 teaspoons finely shredded (grated) orange peel
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1-1/2 teaspoons butter, melted

Orange Icing (optional):
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 to 3 teaspoons orange juice



Directions
1. In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of the flour and the yeast; set aside. In a medium saucepan, heat and stir milk, the water, granulated sugar, the 2 tablespoons butter, and the salt until warm (120 degrees F to 130 degrees F) and butter almost melts. Add milk mixture to flour mixture; add egg. Beat with an electric mixer on low to medium speed for 30 seconds, scraping side of bowl constantly. Beat on high speed for 3 minutes.** Using a wooden spoon, stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can.

2. Turn out dough onto a floured surface. Knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough that is smooth and elastic (3 to 5 minutes total). Shape into a ball. Place in a lightly greased bowl; turn once. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in size (1 to 1-1/2 hours).***

3. Meanwhile, for filling: In a small bowl, stir together cranberries, brown sugar, pecans, orange peel, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; set aside.

4. Punch down dough. Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Grease a baking sheet. Roll dough into a 14x10-inch rectangle. Brush with the melted butter. Spread filling over dough. Starting from a long side, roll up dough. Seal seam. Cut roll in half lengthwise. Turn cut sides up. Loosely twist halves together, keeping the cut sides up. Pinch ends to seal. Place loaf on the prepared baking sheet. Cover; let rise in a warm place until nearly double in size (about 30 minutes). Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

5. Bake about 25 minutes or until golden. Transfer loaf to a wire rack; cool completely. If desired, drizzle with Orange Icing.****

6. Orange Icing: In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup powdered sugar and enough orange juice (1 to 3 teaspoons)***** to make icing of drizzling consistency.


* I added a splash of buttermilk, since it was lying around, and we only drink nonfat milk at my house. I thought it might need to be a bit creamier.
** My mixer wasn't having that, so I just kneaded it extra long.
*** My house is totally freezing, so I set my oven to preheat to 375 then turned it off after two minutes. I then covered my bowl of dough with a warm, damp paper towel and set it in the slightly warmed oven to let it rise. (My dad gave me this tip a few months ago while we were sitting in a movie theatre, geeking out about food because we had time to kill before the movie started.)
**** Trust me, you desire it!
***** I totally misread this and thought it said tablespoons. So if you make the same mistake as I did, just keep adding more powdered sugar until you get a nice balance. Make sure you whisk the orange juice and powdered sugar together with a fork or a whisk, or whatever you have on hand, so you get all the clumps of powdered sugar out.