When we were cooking batches of spicy hot cross buns round Easter, I was reminded how these sweeter recipes often include an egg or two as well as a greatly increased amount of sugar. On Friday night I had the time to make some bread by hand and so decided to see what an egg would contribute to the result.
My basic recipe is lifted straight from Dough by Richard Bertinet, which I shared here back in December. I used only white flour for this dough (500g) and added an egg; the first thing I realised was that this increased the liquid content so (after some messy attempts at working the dough) I also added a further 50g of flour to compensate. Next time I will measure the egg as part of the initial liquid (350ml).
The result is illustrated here (a larger set of pictures is available on Flickr) – a good texture and very tasty (particularly round the crust). I do not plan to make it a regular part of my recipe (I love the simplicity of just mixing flour, water, salt and yeast) but will definitely repeat the experiment again.
Want to add something? Please join the conversation about this posting (nb. Yahoo! account required to log into Flickr).