Tea Bread

If  people know one thing about me, it's I love my tea. And I make baked goods. Despite the baking, I've never tried bread. But after getting addicted to Orrowheat bread and seeing it rise to 5$ a pop, I decided to try my  hand at baking my own. I was very concerned I'd create a dough-splosion in my kitchen. But it was far, far easier than I thought!

And of course, after getting confident, I had to look up adding tea to it. :3 Sure enough, not only did Google produce recipes but using some old chai I had. So, double bonus! Use up some old chai, have uber toast!

But enough of that, here's the basic recipe I picked to use for bread.

Amish White Bread

Based on the comments for it, I tend to cut the sugar in half. I also proof my yeast by using my Hotshot to heat the water to 100 degrees then mixing it in a little pyrex measuring cup. Making it into Tea bread was very simple, simply cut open two tea bags and dump it into the water that is used to proof the yeast. Yes, dump it in. The tea recipe I found had a good point. You don't boil oregano or basil in water to use the spice, you dump it in.

For this trial, I was using one pack of Twinings French Vanilla Chai and one Pumpkin Spice Chai. I cut the sugar by about 1/3 and cut the recipe in half for one loaf.

And as you can see from the loaf, the tea adds nice little specks all through out.

Yes, I am proud this turned out so pretty. As far as tasty, to be honest I would not have bitten into this and immediately said, "Hey! This has tea/chai in it!" It has a very nice light taste to it and it smells awesome. I think it's a fun little trick to do, I might try adding another teabag next time for more oomph.

One last little thought. Having lived through a household period of, Eat Wheat Bread or Nothing... if you live with someone that is a wheat bread snob, you can use this trick to disguise your white bread. Between the specs and the browner color, it looks like wheat. :D

I'd stay away from the chai though, the ginger smell might give it away.

One last note I do want to touch on cost again. I can get 20lb of flour for about 14$, organic and unbleached. And I could easily get a bigger 40lb bag for less. So, three OrroWheat loaf for 5$ or... make myself over a dozen loaves, biscuits, pie crust or whatever I want. Easy choice.