Before you round up your brain, your heart, your courage, and your little dog, too, your adventure starts on the Yellow Brick Road. Get a head start by making your own tasty strawberry and lemon breakfast bread homage.
Strawberry Layer
4 ½ cups bread flour
⅓ cup warm water
2 tbsp yeast
¾ cup strawberry syrup
½ cup whole cream
1 tsp kosher salt
1 egg
1 tsp red food coloring
Lemon Layer
4 ½ cups bread flour
1 cup warm water
2 tbsp yeast
1 cup lemon yogurt
juice of 3 medium lemons
zest of 1 medium lemon
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp yellow food coloring
Filling
1 ½ cups blueberry jelly
Let’s be honest. You’re basically making two loaves of bread in complementary flavors, squishing them together, and rolling them up so they look like they start of the Yellow Brick Road.
To make the strawberry layer, start by dissolving your yeast in warm water. Once the granules have become a muddy mess, walk away for 10-15 minutes while the yeast blooms.
When you come back, add the whole cream (this isn’t health food – live a little), salt, egg, food coloring, and sticky sweet strawberry syrup. You’ll find it next to the pancake mixes in your grocery store. It’s basically artificial strawberry flavored sugar in liquid form. This product does not occur in nature. Neither do flying monkeys. That doesn’t mean they aren’t both nifty in their own very special, slightly frightening ways. Try not to stress over it.
Once all of that is well blended, go ahead and add your flour. If you’re using a stand mixer, attach the dough hook and let it attack your bread for the next 6-7 minutes. If you’re kneading by hand, spend the next 10 minutes showing that dough who’s boss. Once it’s kneaded, cover it with a kitchen towel and let it rise until doubled in size, which takes about an hour.
The lemon layer is pretty similar in construction, only using more things that qualify as actual foods. Once more, mix your yeast and warm water into a slurry. Let it bloom for 10-15 minutes. When you come back, add the lemon yogurt, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, salt, and yellow food coloring. Beat it all into an undifferentiated yellow mass, then add the flour.
Just like with the strawberry layer, knead it for 6-7 minutes in a stand mixer or 8-10 by hand. Either way, cover it up with a kitchen towel when you’re finished and let it double in size.
If you have kitchen minions, it’s best to try and mix up both loaves at the same time. That way they’ll both rise together and both be ready to have the air punched out of them together in an hour. If you’re working alone, I say just start both batches as close together as possible. Get the lemon loaf’s yeast proofing before you start kneading the strawberry loaf. That way, it’s ready to go as soon as you put a towel over the strawberry bread. You should end up with a mere 10 minute gap in time. Don’t stress over it. This is novelty bread.
Once both of your loaves have risen for about an hour and roughly doubled in size, punch them down.
You should now have enough dough to make three 1 pound loaves of bread. (Two if you like the supersized pans.)
Cut each dough into three equal sized pieces. Roll out one rectangle of yellow and one rectangle of red.
Paint the yellow dough with ⅓ of your blueberry jelly then arrange the red dough neatly on top.
Roll it up like a jelly roll, cinnamon roll, or whatever roll shaped concoction you enjoy imagining.
Really lube up a pan with a generous amount of butter. This is important, because some jelly is going to leak out, and if you don’t have that pan properly greased, your bread will totally stick to the surface.
Put the bread in the middle of the pan, seam side down.
Repeat until you have three loaves.
Let the trio rise until once more doubled in size, which should take about an hour.
Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes.
I opted for looser rolls in hopes of better evoking the road. You’re welcome to roll your dough out much longer and make a tighter spiral with more loops. This works much better if you have larger bread pans. Fair warning, though, if you try to add more than 1 more loop around in a standard bread pan, you’ll end up with something that looks like a Willy Wonka-esque vortex and not so much like the start of the Yellow Brick Road.
This stuff is ridiculously tasty toasted with butter. It also makes incredibly decadent French Toast (especially if you spike the batter with a little extra lemon juice and some sugar to help really bring out the flavors.)
