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When There Was A Bear In My Oven……….

B.
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Ingredients
  

  • 1 1/4 tsps active dry yeast
  • 1 cup milk warm
  • 30 gm butter , softened
  • 1 1/2 tbsps sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 1/4 to 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • Chocolate chips and buttons for decoration
  • 2 tbsps milk

Instructions
 

  • You can do the kneading by hand, but I always use my food processor when I can.
  • In a small bowl, add sugar and yeast to the milk and stir till dissolved. Keep aside for 5 to 10 minutes till frothy.
  • Put the butter, salt and 2 cups flour into the food processor bowl and pulse a couple of time to blend. Add the yeast mixture and process until a dough forms. Add more flour in spoonsful, if necessary, and process/ knead till you have a soft and elastic dough which is not sticky.
  • Shape the dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, turning the dough around to coat it well with the oil. Cover and let rise until doubled. This should take about an hour.
  • Lightly punch the dough down. Turn it onto a lightly floured working surface and divide into 2 equal portions. Cut one portion into 2 portions, a one third portion and a two thirds portion. Form each portion into a smooth ball. The smaller bit will form the head and the larger the body. half; shape into balls.
  • Cut the other half into 7 equal portions and shape them all into smooth round balls. Take a greased baking sheet and place the head and body in the centre joined together. Flatten them slightly. Arrange 2 of the 7 balls on top of the head to form ears. Using the end of a wooden dowel (or even your thumb) make depressions in the ears.
  • Place 1 ball of the remaining 5 balls on the lower part of the face to make the nose. Flatten slightly and smoothen the edges of the u201cnoseu201d onto the u201cfaceu201d so that it doesnu2019t separate during baking. Now arrange the remaining 4 balls to form the arms and legs of the teddy bear.
  • Cover the teddy bear with a cotton towel and allow it to rise for another hour till almost double. Brush the teddy bear with milk and place the chocolate buttons for eyes, nose, in the ear depressions and on the body. Use mini-chocolate chips on arms and legs to resemble claws.
  • Bake the teddy bear at 190C (375F) for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Carefully remove the bread from the pan and cool on wire racks.
  • Slice it and eat, if you can bring yourself to do so! This loaf cuts into about 12 slices.

Notes

The real inspiration behind this bread was Michelle of our former ABin5/ HBin5 bread baking group. I joined the group with well-meaning intentions of baking my way throught the book but stopped about half way through the book! Well, the rest of the group (most of them anyways) baked through the book and thought it would be fun to continue baking as a group but with different themes every month.
This month Michelle suggested "Family Traditions", since everyone would be preparing for the Christmas season. We don't celebrate Christmas, but I thought it would be a nice change to start a bread baking tradition of my own every Decemeber, one of trying out something I've never done before! And so my "Teddy Bear" bear.
This “Teddy Bear” bread is also being YeastSpotted!
As I just mentioned now, we don’t celebrate Christmas but who wouldn't like to celebrate food and this is a great season as any to do so. So from my next post onwards, I will be doing a “Seven Days Of Christmas” set of posts with a slight difference. I will be doing a total of 7 posts, one every two days, featuring foods that are normally made/ baked in various parts of India for Christmas.