Ali’s back to conclude this week of peanut butter here on cupcakes for dinner. I’m sorry peanut butter is often neglected here, but I hope you peanut butter lovers enjoy the two recipes I have for you.
I’ll be honest with you. I am not a huge fan of peanut butter. When I grew up, I was the weird kid who wanted tuna sandwiches instead of the peanut butter and jelly of my peers. The smell of it in my teenage years made me nauseous. The first time I was able to eat anything with peanut butter was well into college and even then it was just for the occasional reese’s cup.
Lo-and-behold I was given the task of tagalongs. I figured if I’m going to get a peanut butter cookie, I’m going to embrace it. Lucky for me, the Tagalong has a chocolate coating so I could at least have that Reese’s-like balance.
I decided to make a bread, a brioche to be precise. A chocolate and hazelnut brioche served as my inspiration, with chocolate Skippy’s peanut butter replacing the nutella. Plus, the addition of bourbon for good measure. Bourbon always makes everything better.
Rolling this dough out proved to be incredibly difficult. I got it as wide as I could with my rolling pin but the dough was so sticky, I ended up using my hands for most of spreading. I advise not only flouring your rolling pin, but also the top of the brioche.
This bread turned out so much better than I expected — especially because I had a little incident. After rising the dough for an hour and a half, i nearly dropped the tin on the way to the oven. It went sideways and hit the oven rim, losing all of the rise it had gained. I put it in the oven, and cried for three minutes at what I thought was a total loss of all of the work I had done.
A miracle. It re-rose in the oven and still came out incredibly fluffy, tender, and delicious. I wish you even better luck when you make yours.
Ingredients
- 1 stand mixer with a dough hook
- 1 spatula
- 1 bread tin
- 1 scale (if you don’t own one, it’s worth the investment)
- 245g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 25g sugar
- 5g salt
- 1 package of instant yeast
- 70ml milk
- 1/2 tbsp bourbon
- 2 eggs, plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 125g butter, cubed at room temperature (just over one stick)
- 1/2 cup chocolate peanut butter, whisked with 1/2 tbsp of bourbon
- 1 package of tagalongs
- 1 egg yolk, whisked with 2 tbsp milk (for wash)
Instructions
- In your stand mixer with a dough hook, place the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Combine on slow speed.
- Add milk, eggs, and 1/2 tablespoon of bourbon continuing on slow speed for 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure all of the flour gets mixed into the wet ingredients.
- Switch to medium speed and mix further for 6-8 minutes. The dough will be soft and elastic.
- Add the cubes of softened butter piece by piece and mix until butter is completely incorporated, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the bowl again for dispersion.
- Lightly flour a surface and place the kneaded dough to roll a rectangle, roughly 12 inches x 16 inches. The dough will be incredibly sticky.
- Mix the peanut butter and remaining 1/2 tablespoon of bourbon with a fork, so that the peanut butter is easier to spread.
- Use a spatula to spread the peanut butter evenly across the rectangle.
- Chop 10 of the tagalongs (2 rows) until small pieces, then sprinkle it evenly on the rectangle on top of the peanut butter.
- Cut the dough in 6-8 lengthwise strips. Place strips on top of each other to form a single stack.
- Slice the stack into 4-5 even pieces. Place the squares in a lined or buttered loaf tin, side-by-side. It will not fill the tin entirely, but the dough will rise and fill the tin the rest of the way.
- Brush the loaf with the egg wash. Leave to rise for an hour and a half in a warm place (I turned my oven on to the lowest setting, 170F, and put the loaf on top, so as not to melt the butter. If yours will go as low as 80F, you can even put it in the oven for a better proof.)
- Once risen, preheat the oven to 350F, bake for 20-30 minutes, until golden brown on top. Check at 15 minutes if it’s over-browned, and add tin foil if necessary.
- Leave to cool in tin for five minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack.