BREAKING BEAUTIFUL BREAD TOGETHER

A loaf of bread has the magical ability to make friendships blossom. People have been breaking bread together as a way to express their friendly feelings for millennia. It is a symbol of basic food diplomacy. It’s a beautiful thing.

So since we are celebrating Beautiful Friendships all week this week, we are sharing some of the most beautiful breads that are happening right now. Check them out with a friend :).

APPLE CINNAMON BREAD

This beautiful bread from Hannah Grunzke, of Rise & Shine, is a stunner. Shaped like a baroque autumn sunflower, with decorative sculpting and cutwork that is accented by dark layers of spiced frangipane and perfectly baked bronzing, and a spiraled starburst of cinnamon-sugared apple slices baked into its center.

Check out the recipe here.

DUTCH CRUNCH BREAD

Hannah Grunzke has another magnificent loaf to share. This beautiful bread celebrates cracks, with it gorgeous patterned crust. The edges of the cracks are intentionally browned more than the rest of the bread’s surface to create extra crunch in your bite.

The bread’s surface is glazed with a mixture of rice flour, sesame oil and Marmite, for extra flavor and color.

The recipe for the bread and the Dutch Crunch topping came from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. Check it out here.

Check out the recipe here.

HAPPY BREAD

This magnificent bread comes from Maya, the Food Diva, a food blogger from Borneo. She adapted it from Eva Toneva’s 'Holiday Bread,' and renamed it 'Happy Bread' because it made her “light up inside just looking at it!”

As Maya puts it, “Wouldn't the sight of something this soft, this buttery and this swirly cheer you up immensely too?”

Check out the recipe here.

Dewi, of Elra’s Baking blog, turned a traditional Rewena Paraoa (Maori bread) into a work of art. She stenciled it, using a fava bean leaf pattern, then covered it with black sesame seeds.

It’s beautiful inside too, with chewy open potato-enhanced crumbs and rosemary perfume.

To view the full recipe that Dewi used, please visit Lien at Notitie Van Lien and the Bread Baking Babes.

PANE IBLEO

Barbara, of Bread & Companatico, a food blog focused on beautiful bread, made these picture-perfect rustic Pane Ibleo loaves. She was inspired by a drawing she found when researching ancient Italian breads, made with heritage wheat flours.

Like sourdough bread, Pane Ibleo was traditionally made by Sicilian homemakers, from the village of Iblei, every week, using mother dough from the previous week, baked wood-fired ovens.

It has a dense crumb and makes for a fabulous Pane Cunzato, a traditional dressed bread, with a little bit of fresh tomato juice, olive oil, oregano, and salt soaked in.

Check out the recipe here.

SECOND INTERNATIONAL HOLMA WORKSHOP

If you want to learn how to make beautiful breads yourself, check out Bread & Companatico & Holma’s Second International Holma Workshop in Naturally Leavened Handcrafted Bread. This intensive 2-day workshop will be held in March 2015 in southern Sweden at the Holma organic farm.

This farm has a fully equipped kitchen, focused on bread making, with a big professional oven, professional stand mixers, large fridges for dough retardation, and… it’s own mill for freshly grinding flour from organic grains.

The workshop will cover the main areas of naturally leavened handcrafted bread, including working with heritage flours, wild yeasts, and a variety of sourdough cultures. You will get to take clones of these starters home with you so you can make the breads at home.

You’ll roll through traditional techniques, learn recipes and shapes, and learn how to decorate them with flourish.

The main teacher will be Holma Organic Kitchen’s Chef Beesham Soogrim, an expert in sourdough bread baking. Bengt-Göran Carlsson and Hans Larsson, from the nonprofit organization OrdBildarna, will teach about local heritage grains.

Read more about Beautiful Friendships, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including We Are Moved by Beautiful Encounters and An Animal Friend in Need is a Beautiful Friend Indeed.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Friendships in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 11.23.2014. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Photo: Courtesy of Daring Baker Duluth. Apple Cinnamon Bread.
2. Photo: Courtesy of Daring Baker Duluth. Apple Cinnamon Bread.
3. Photo: Courtesy of Daring Baker Duluth. Dutch Crunch Bread.
4. Photo: Courtesy of Food Diva Kitchen. Happy Bread.
5. Photo: Courtesy of Elra’s Baking. Maori Bread.
6. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Pane Ibleo Loaves.
7. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Example of Scoring.
8. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Country Sourdough.
9. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Sourdough Danish.
10. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Sourdough Pizza Crust.
11. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Heritage Wheat Sourdough.
12. Photo: Courtesy of Bread & Companatico. Chestnut Chocolate Whole Wheat Sourdough.