Pesto Bread

Last Friday, Mika and Liz decided to host a little pre-Christmas party to get us all in the festive spirit :) (we have exams next week, or at least some of us, so this was an incredibly welcome break!) I decided that there wasn't going to be a better opportunity to cook and bake again, so I decided to contribute a pesto bread and a few other goodies to the meal. With the help of my amazing assistant Lucia, we managed to get everything done almost in time :)

As a side, I opted for a pesto bread that I found here. It looks pretty cool I find, and I can assure you it tastes great!

Ingredients

600 g flour

300 g of warm water

1 packet of dried yeast

1/2 teaspoon of sugar

2 teaspoons of salt

50 g of oil 

1 jar of pesto

If you don't have the fast active dried yeast, mix the yeast with the sugar and a bit of warm water, otherwise skip this step and mix all the ingredients in a big bowl. Knead the dough with the dough hooks of your mixer until it combines nicely, then continue kneading with your hands for 1-2 minutes until it forms into a ball and doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and leave the dough to prove for an hour in a warm place or until it doubles in size. 

Divide the dough into 3 equal parts and take a normal round cake tin of a diameter of at least 20 cm, the bigger the better really (the dough will take less time to bake and also your pesto bread sun will be bigger). Roll out the dough to the desired diameter and cover it in pesto. Be quite generous here :) Place the next rolled out dough on top, and repeat the pesto process. Don't cover the last part in pesto though. Then cut the dough into 16 equal parts and leave out some space in the middle. Take 2 strands that are next to each other and twist them outside twice. Continue with all of the strands until you are done :) It should look like this: 

Place the dough on a baking tray covered with baking paper (either on the bottom of your cake tin or simply roll it out and put it in place on the baking sheet/baking paper on the tray. Leave to prove for another 30 minutes. Bake in the preheated oven at 175°C for about 35-40 minutes or until its surface is nicely browned. Let it cool and enjoy :)