A Saturday morning of celebration: marbled pull apart bread with orange sugar filling

After a couple of weeks of crazy events it was about time to celebrate! Wally and I are not really party-people but we sure know how to celebrate with a great breakfast. This is how we did it this morning.

The school where I work finally moved. We opened on Wednesday and I have to admit the adjustment is hard. The school is wonderful but it’s also much bigger than the previous place (the old one was minuscule so anything would have been bigger!) and there are many more kids. I spent 2 days looking around for things because I don’t remember where we put them. And I spent 2 days running after kids (they were running faster than usual ‘cause they were very excited about the new space we have!). I have to say: we haven't lost any kid…so I think we can be satisfied about the first two days of school J

Also, Wally and I have finally fixed all our house issues: the house is ours! We are moving in 2 weeks! After all the craziness we went through, we got the house. Or, as Wally says “we are nesting” (I love this English expression!). Instead of emails to write, phone calls to lawyers, bad thoughts against the agent and the seller, we are finally in the happy phase of organizing the move. Yuhuuu!

Aaaand...as some of you have noticed, I was even able to post my first challenge for the project food blog competition. Man...that was a hard one! How can you have a loquacious (way too loquacious) Italian limit the story about herself to under 1000 words AND still be relevant?! It was one of the hardest tasks for me but thanks to all of you who took the time and patience to read through it!

To celebrate and to give us the energy to start the moving (honestly, who likes moving?! I mean, unpacking is fun, but packing….zzzzzzzz) I decided to treat us with a nice Saturday breakfast. I have bookmarked this amazing recipe of a pull apart bread made by Le Petite Brioche more or less one month ago but still had not tried it [check out her post for more  mouthwatering pictures. I decided to make it yesterday afternoon for today’s breakfast. I went back to the original source, a Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee Cake by Flo Baker but I twisted it a bit. First of all, mine is a “marbled” version of it: one slice of plain bread alternates with one slice of chocolate bread. In this way Wally and I can equally share it: he gets the chocolate bread slices and I get the plain one J and everybody’s happy! Second, I made an orange filling which perfectly complements the chocolate flavor! I also decided to leave out the icing and, honestly, I’m very happy about that decision!

Now it’s time for me to go around looking for boxes to pack! I hope you’ll like this recipe.

Sweet Yeast Dough

Ingredients

about 380 gr (3 cups or 13 1/2 oz) all-purpose flour

50 gr (1/4 cup or 1 3/4 oz) granulated sugar

12 gr (2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast

2 gr (1/2 tsp) salt

75 ml (1/3 cup or 2 1/2 fl oz) whole milk

57 gr (1/4 cup or 2 oz) unsalted butter

60 ml (1/4 cup or 2 fl oz) water

7 ml (1 1/2 tsp) pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs, at room temperature

30 gr (2 tbsp) cocoa powder

Orange Sugar Filling

Ingredients

100 gr (1/2 cup or 3 1/2 oz) granulated sugar

finely grated zest of 1 orange

57 gr (1/4 cup or 2 oz) unsalted butter, melted

In a big bowl, mix two cups (nine ounces) of flour, the sugar, the yeast, and the salt. In the meantime, in a small bowl combine the milk and the butter and heat in the microwave until the butter is melted. Add the water to the milk mixture and let it rest a minute until just warm. Finally, stir in the vanilla extract.

Pour the milk mixture into the flour and mix until the flour is evenly moistened.

Beat in the eggs one at a time and continue stirring until well incorporated.

Start adding the remaining flour one tablespoon at a time and continue mixing until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky.

Separate the dough into two balls. Lightly flour a work surface and knead one the two until smooth and no longer sticky. Add about two tablespoons of cocoa powder to the remaining dough and again knead it until smooth. Place the two balls of dough into two separate bowls, cover them with plastic wrap, and let them rise in a warm place for 45-60 minutes or until doubled in size.

Meanwhile, make the orange sugar filling. Mix the sugar and the orange zest and let it rest so that the sugar will absorb the citrus oils.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Grease a 9″x5″ loaf pan.

Gently deflate the dough with your hand. Flour a work surface and roll the dough into two rectangles. Use a pastry brush to spread the melted butter evenly over the dough.

Use a pizza cutter to cut the dough crosswise in five strips and sprinkle the orange sugar over the first buttered rectangle. Top it with a second rectangle, sprinkling that one with orange sugar as well. Continue to top with rectangles and sprinkle with the orange sugar, alternating one plain dough rectangle with one chocolate dough rectangle until you have a stack of ten rectangles, all buttered and topped with orange sugar.

Now slice this stack of rectangles crosswise, through all ten layers, into 3 or 4 equal rectangles. Carefully transfer these strips of dough into the previously greased the loaf pan, cut edges up, side by side. There might be a lot of room left in the pan but the bread will rise and expand again.

Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place for another 30 to 50 minutes.

Bake the loaf for about 30-35 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes. (I actually started eating it right away J)

You may or may not top it with icing but really the orange sugar gives it a wonderful taste by itself.

Have a sweet day!

Adapted from: Flo Baker

I submitted this recipe to YeastSpotting! Check it out next Friday!