Bread for croutons (Pan de torrijas)

Category: Yeast bread

Kitchen: spanish

Ingredients
premium wheat flour	550 g
milk	360-380 ml
fresh pressed / instant dry yeast	21 g / 7 g
sugar	1 tsp
honey	1 tsp
orange zest	1/2 tsp
lemon zest	1/2 tsp
salt	5 g

Cooking method

The day before making bread, mix 1 g of fresh yeast (1/8 teaspoon dry yeast) with 75 ml of warm milk. Add 140 g flour, preferably 11-12% protein.

Combine all ingredients and knead the dough.

Place the dough in a bowl, lightly dust with flour, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the next day.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator 1 to 2 hours before making the bread to warm the dough and activate the yeast.

Prepare sugar, honey and zest to flavor the milk.

Heat milk with rind, honey and sugar. Do not overheat, it must be warm so that the yeast does not die. Mix all ingredients well.

Cut the dough you made the day before into small pieces.

Add all the ingredients to the bucket of the bread maker according to the instructions for your model, for Panasonic, first dry, then liquid ingredients: dry yeast, flour, salt, dough pieces, flavored milk (if desired, the zest can be filtered). Place the bucket in the bread maker, select the "Basic" dough program.

For hand kneading: dissolve yeast in warm flavored milk, add dough pieces, salt and flour until smooth. When you get a more or less homogeneous dough, sprinkle flour on the work surface and knead an elastic dough, if it is difficult to control the kneading, then let the dough rest for a few minutes. Sprinkle the dough with flour, transfer it to a bowl, cover with a linen napkin and let it ferment for 1-1.5 hours, depending on the temperature in the room.

At the end of the program, take the dough out of the bucket and knead it lightly.

Stretch the dough with your hands into a rectangular layer, wrap a third of the dough and seal well. Fold the other piece of dough into the center and seal. Next, fold the dough in half and join both sides, seal the seam.

Lay the TK with the fold up and roll it into a loaf. If you see that the dough shrinks during rolling, then leave the TK for a few minutes and continue working. You should get a TK with a length approximately equal to the length of your baking sheet diagonally. Place the TK on a baking sheet, cover with a napkin and leave in a warm, draft-free place until it doubles in size, for 30-35 minutes.

Next, preheat the oven to 220 C.
With a sharp knife, make cuts on the surface of the TZ, indicating the width (thickness) of the future crouton (mostly about 2 cm). Reduce the oven temperature to 200 C, place a baking sheet with TK and bake bread at 200 C for 30 minutes or until you see that your bread is ready. If you notice the bread is baking too much, cover with foil and cook until tender.
After baking, place the bread on the rack and refrigerate.
The bread is suitable not only for making Torrijas toast, but also for French toast, simple toast accompanied by butter and jam, and for sandwiches.

The dish is designed for

1 bread, 14-16 croutons.

Note

According to the recipe Chipirón (Spain). Thanks to the author!
Traditionally, torrijas toasts are made from yesterday's stale bread, but special bread is also used, which is easy to find in pastry shops and bakeries in Spain or to make at home.Basically, it is believed that such bread should have the perfect crumb texture so that it can absorb the milk that is used to soak the bread slices without breaking or falling apart. The crumb should be compact, but not too dense, and uniform. The type of bread used for croutons is usually the main bread, fortified with milk, there is no butter or olive oil, and it is not made with sourdough. The time for fermentation and proofing should not be too long and it should not be kneaded for too long.
Cooking torrijas croutons (torrijas) or torrijas croutons with wine (torrijas de vino) is similar to making French croutons, with slight changes in technology: milk is not mixed with beaten eggs.

Matured for 1 day, or preferably 2 days, cut the bread into slices. Bring the milk to a boil with cinnamon, lemon zest, orange zest and sugar, cook for a few minutes, turn off the stove and let it brew, filter and dip slices of bread in warm milk. Further, some recipes recommend leaving slices of bread on a platter for 2 hours, while others recommend immediately dipping slices of bread in a beaten egg and frying in well-heated oil on both sides. Place the toasted croutons on paper towels to remove excess oil. Then mix the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle the croutons on all sides.
There are two options for making toast with wine: replacing milk to soak the bread with wine, or preparing syrup with wine to serve already fried toast.