Friday, August 6, 2010

Vienna (Fino) Bread Recipe

After a very long time and many trials, I finally figured out how to make Vienna Bread (commonly known in Egypt as Fino). The bread has a very thin and soft crust, very light, and chewy. Here is the recipe.
Ingredients:
850 ml of flour (if you have a cup of 200 ml, then just measure 4.25 times) (roughly 550-600 g)
210 ml warm water
85 ml oil
42 g fresh yeast (you can substitute for about 10 g of active dry yeast)
5 tbsp sugar
1/3 tsp salt

For this recipe I use my bread machine, but if you have an electric mixer with dough extention or even by hand it should be ok. Add the yeast to the water, then add 1 tsp sugar, then mix well until all yeast is dissolved. Now in the bread machine (mixing bowl) add everything except flour and salt. On top of that add the flour. Mix for 5 minutes on low speed. Let rest for 5 minutes. Add the salt and mix on medium/high speed for 15 minutes. Let it rise in a warm place (the bread machine should do that for you if you select the dough cycle) for about 50-60 minutes, the dough will be roughly 3 times the original size. Punch down, divide into 4 pieces for big loaves. Make each piece into a ball then spread it into a rectangle, roughly 20x35 cm. Roll to get a 35 cm long loaf. Pleace on baking paper and let rise for about 25 minutes in a warm _humid_ place. I heat the oven to 50 degrees, add 100 ml of hot water to the bottom of the oven, turn it off, and put my bread inside. After 25 minutes, take the bread out of the oven, heat the oven till it's 200 degrees (not any less). Spray the bread with a mixture of sugar and water (1 tbsp sugar for 125 ml water). Put the bread in the oven, set the oven to roughly 230-240 degrees, and add another 100 ml of hot water to the bottom of the oven. The bread should start showing color in 3 mintues and should be red/light brown colored in 8-10 minutes. Take bread out, spray once more with water and sugar. Let the bread cool for a while (the crust will become soft during that time). Bag the bread, it will stay fresh for roughly 2-3 days when properly bagged. Or refregirate/freeze for more time. Defrosts/heats very well in a microwave oven.

This recipe was created completely by me, use it, don't publish it.

NOTE: I will post photos when I make the bread next time.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you add the 100 ml of water to the bottom of the oven? Should i use a low profile, high surface area container?

Also, I like the way you use metric and english units with ease.

I will tell you how i make out with this recipe, thanks

Andrew Boktor said...

yea, usually there is a sort of pan that comes with the oven, put it in the lowest shelf and just pour the water on top of it.
Let me know how ot goes.

Anonymous said...

Is it possible not to use sugar at all?

Andrew Boktor said...

You can try. However, yeast grows much slower on starch compared to sugars. So you might be looking at longer rising/proofing times. At the worst case the bread might not rise/proof correctly at all since the amount of sugar in this recipe is significant.
Despite that, you can substitute sugar with glucose and possibly corn syrup if you are okay with those ingredients instead.

Anonymous said...

Am I right to assume that the oven temperature is in degrees Celsius? Hope to try this recipe soon, my kid loves this bread. Thanks for posting.

Unknown said...

Your recipe is amazing, I found out that it is the best among the many recipes mentioned in the other websites. Thank you.