This gift came almost 3 weeks after my birthday but it really made my year, So much love, so much affection… I am truly flattered by this special gift from a special person. Thank you dear friend, I have no words to express how much this means to me. I received this huge package of a Romertomf clay baker and 2 books , The soul of a new cuisine by Marcus Samuelsson and Jill O’ Connor’s Sticky , Chewy , Messy, Gooey plus a whole load of different spice blends from World Market , Soba and Udon noodle packets. This was an unexpected gift and this time I really was jumping all over the house

After the jumping though, I wanted to put the baker to good use and decided to use the baker to bake my Mango Bread . The recipe is from a book called The Home Baker that I picked up from the library for a dollar.

Ingredients:

2 cups white bread flour

1 small mango diced and pureed

1/4 cup light brown sugar

3 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons of honey

1 teaspoon of ginger ( acc to the recipe , I forgot to add it !)

1 & 1/2 teaspoons of active dry yeast

1 cup of tepid water

2/3 cups of raisins

One egg lightly beaten

Method:

1. Take the flour, sugar, butter, honey and ginger in a warmed bowl and rub the butter in with your fingers until the flour has a crumbly texture.

2. Add the yeast , mango puree , tepid water and knead well on a flour surface for about 5-10 minutes or until its elastic

3. Put it in a clean , greased bowl ( I greased it with a cooking spray) and cover it with a wrap and leave it for an hour until the dough is doubled.

4. Remove from the bowl, knead again , fold in the raisins and leave it again for 40 minutes. Here comes my clay pot into picture

What I did was

• I soaked the claypot in water for a good 20 minutes and dried it , put a parchment paper at the bottom, greased it with a cooking spray , this is important as the bread dough is a little sticky and it might be difficult for the bread to come off once baked. So I placed the dough and covered it
• As per the instructions , they say that the claypot should not be kept in a preheated oven , instead it has to be kept in a cold oven, so after 40 minutes , I brushed the dough with the beaten egg , placed it in the bottom rack of the oven, covered it with the lid and turned the oven to 425 F and did not peek into it for 35 minutes .
• After 35minutes , I removed the lid and lowered the temperature to 400 F and let it bake for another 5 minutes.
• Then it began to brown and I removed it from the oven , let it sit for about 10 minutes , removed it from the pot and let it cool on a cooling rack for about 40 minutes.
• Then, dusted it with confectioner’s sugar and serve.
• The result of it was a nice brown crust on the top and it was very moist and exotic inside.

This goes to dear Meeta’s Monthly Mingle - Mango Mania .