Bread Baking Babes: Sugar bread or Sûkerbôlle! / Fries suikerbrood

(In het Nederlands? Even scrollen!)
Are we hot or what? This month we are the Sugababes! And we'll be singing the praise of a sweet bread. Monique at Living on Bread and Water, presided the table in our Kitchen of the Month and made us bake a Dutch loaf full of sugar, with a hint of cinnamon and ginger! This bread is the pride of Friesland in the north of Holland; land of blue skies, clear water, white sails, skates and black and white cows.

Sugar is definitely the star of this show, the sugar that is used in this loaf is a pearl sugar, available in lumps, clumps or grains. At least.... here in Holland! Luckily these are easily substituted by smashing some regular sugar cubes to bits. You'll want fairly large bits of sugar, the idea is that you'll find moist pockets of sugary goo with some discernable sugar clumps throughout your bread.

The ginger syrup used is one we can buy bottled here. It is a by product of candied or preserved ginger. Preserved ginger here is usually found in jars of stem ginger in syrup, either in marble sized balls, or slivers as shown below. Not to be found in the US? Lynn to the rescue! Thanks to her recipe, we all had ginger syrup. Home made ginger syrup, now how sweet is that?

The recipe is very straight forward:
(this is a slight adaptation from the recipe Monique gave us, less butter more liquid)

500 gr all purpose flour
2 tsp instant yeast
1.1/2 tsp salt
3 tablespoons of ginger-syrup **
180 gr luke warm milk
50 gr unsalted softened butter
2 eggs
150 gr pearl sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon (or some more...)

Knead a dough with all of the ingredients except the sugar and cinnamon. Resulting dough will be soft, silky and supple. Let it rise for 45 minutes.

Next fold in the sugar and cinnamon and knead to combine. Don't add the sugar until after that first rise, it will attract moisture from your dough and melt away. Incorporating the sugar grains is hard at first, the dough won't accept it easily. It might seem rude but I feel the best way to do it is flattening the dough ball, sprinkle sugar mix on top, fold dough over itself again and use a plastic dough scraper to cut into the dough, separating large chunks and gathering those again. (Works magic with any filled loaf such as e.g. stollen) This way it's quick to adjust to the sugar grains, resulting in streaks of cinnamon and sugar throughout the dough, kind of marbled effect.

Shape a regular loaf by flattening it in a rectangle and making a business letter turn; left side to the center, right side to the center, quarter turn and roll up. Put in a loaf tin, seam side down. Make sure the tin is thoroughly greased. Lots of butter! And then some more! Or, grease and line with -greased- parchment paper. All this sugar will stick! Cover and let rise for another 20-25 minutes. Monique suggests to sprinkle a little granulated sugar on top for a caramel glaze...

Bake in a preheated oven 200C/400F for about 30 minutes. Take care it doesn't brown too much before it's completely done. Top with foil if that happens.
Great breakfast bread either fresh or toasted with a generous lick of butter! Afternoon tea,.... Incredibly yummy! Bread Baking Buddies info: please scroll all the way down, right past those yummy pics!

** Made a supply of ginger syrup? Add some in your salad dressing, use in a marinade for pork ribs, add to cookie or cake batter, use some to add to your sateh-sauce, spoon over ice cream, add to a chicken curry... Possibilities are endless!

Recept Suikerbrood:
500 gr bloem
2 tl droge gist
1.1/2 tl salt
3 el gember siroop
180 gr lauwwarme melk
50 gr zachte ongezoute boter
2 eieren
150 gr parel suiker gemengd met 1 tl kaneel

Deeg maken met alle ingrediënten behalve de suiker en kaneel. Laat dit zachte en soepele deeg ong. 45 min. op een warme plaats rijzen tot het ongeveer verdubbeld is. Dan de suiker met kaneel door het deeg werken door het deeg in een rechthoek te duwen en de suiker hierop te strooien, vouw het deeg dan dubbel en met behulp van een deegschraper kun je nu grote stukken "snijden" die je vervolgens weer bij elkaar raapt en doorkneedt.

Vorm nu je brood door het deeg weer in een rechthoek te duwen, linkerzijde naar het midden vouwen, rechterzijde naar het midden vouwen, beetje plat duwen en vanaf de bovenkant oprollen. Met de naad naar beneden in een zéér goed beboterd broodblik leggen. Echt heel goed invetten, de suiker plakt ontzettend!! Eventueel kun je ook je bakblik bekleden met bakpapier of een aluminium wegwerp vorm gebruiken.
Afbakken op 200C, ong. 30 minuten. Bread Baking Buddies: Come on and bake with us! As usual for those of you who would like to join us and be a Bread Baking Buddy, please bake this Sugar Loaf, post on your blog and send the link to the post to Monique's before midnight on the 8th of October. She will round up all Baking Buddies in her Kitchen of the Month at Living on Bread and Water and send you your well deserved Buddy Badge!

My Bread Baking Babes Sisters: Notitie Van Lien (Lien), My Kitchen In Half-Cups (Tanna), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn), I like To Cook (Sara) , Grain Doe (Gorel), Living on Bread and Water (Monique), Lucullian Delights (Ilva), Babes on Hiatus this month are Mary and Katie.