Orange Pull Apart Bread - The Secret Recipe Club

It's the second Monday of the month and you know what that means!!! It's Secret Recipe Club reveal day for my group. This month I was assigned, The Tasty Cheapskate - where tasty and cheap eat together. Jean has a great concept for her blog, eating delicious foods for cheap. All of her posts have cost breakdown and it was interesting to see how the prices of items have changed in the past three years. I chose a recipe, Orange Pull Apart Bread, that Jean made in October 2011. She noted the cost of an orange was 33 cents, I paid $1 for an orange to make this recipe...crazy!

I have seen pull apart breads all over Pinterest but haven't tried one yet because when I read the instructions, it seemed daunting...until I saw this post. Jean had step by step instructions and the fear was gone. I knew I couldn't mess it up with all the photos she provided....well, except that I rolled my dough a little too thin! It still worked out well and I ended up with thinner pieces of bread to nibble on. I think the next time I'll try it, I'll frost it with a cream cheese frosting, a la orange cinnamon rolls I used to eat growing up as a kid.

1/3 cup milk

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup sugar

1 packet of quick-rise yeast

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

2 3/4 - 3 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar mixed with zest of one orange

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

Heat the milk to melt the butter and then add in the water into a bowl of a stand mixer. The liquid should be warm but not too hot. Add in the sugar and yeast. Once you start smelling the yeast, add in the eggs and vanilla. Mix together. 

Add in 1 cup of flour and mix on slow with a dough hook. Add in another cup of flour and mix. At this point, my dough was really wet, so I ended up using almost 3 1/2 cups of flour until my dough was no longer sticky. Knead the dough until it forms into a ball. The dough is different than regular dough that I'm used it, it's more oily, but that is because it is a richer dough. Once the dough has formed into a ball, allow to rise until its doubled in sized. I use the proof setting on my oven (LOVE), and it took about an hour. 

Grease a loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray and set aside. Once the dough has risen, punch it down and turn out onto a floured counter. Roll into a 12 x 20 inch rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Take the melted butter and spread it all over the dough. Sprinkle the orange sugar all over the buttered dough. 

Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 5 strips from the short side. Stack the slices and then slice the long piece into 6 squares. Stack all these pieces together, cut side up and place them in the greased loaf pan. Allow to rise again until the dough is to the top of the pan or slightly above. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes until the top becomes golden brown. Allow to cool in the pan and then transfer to plate where you get to pull apart slices of delicious orange bread. 

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