Mummy Bread

When you think of Halloween what do you imagine? The first thing that comes to mind for me is the old school monsters and such; you know, vampires, werewolves, mummies, witches.... The whole “scary clown” thing doesn't say Halloween to me...it just says “horrifically creepy”

(Clowns are evil to begin with).

And what is up with the whole “you have to dress like a strumpet if you are a girl” thing. I mean, have you seen the costumes for girls out there?

Seriously – Google some costumes for girls. It’s ridiculous.

Anyway, before I go off on a tangent about the gratuitous sexualisation of young girls, let’s get back to Halloween and Halloween food.

I’m going with mummies today. Mummies are one of the easiest Halloween creatures to make food into. Just wrap something up with strips of something else and...VOILA.....mummy.

This is a calzone type bread mummy that only takes about 30 minutes to an hour from start to finish. Why the big leeway with the time? It depends on how fast you are at mummy braiding and how many mummies you decide to make.

This bread recipe is quick and easy and can be used for a million different things. Sue and I used it to make BREAD CORNUCOPIAS for Thanksgiving. Any bread recipe will do though, even frozen bread dough from the store I would think.

Bread Dough

Ingredients

5 - 5 1/2 cups flour

3 Tbsp sugar

2 envelopes Rapid Rise Yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup water

1/3 cup butter, cut into pieces

one egg, beaten - for egg wash

Directions

In a large bowl combine 3 cups flour, sugar, undissolved yeast, salt and baking soda. Heat buttermilk, water and butter until very warm (120 - 130); butter does not need to melt completely. Mixture will appear curdled.

Stir into flour mixture. Stir in enough remaining flour to make soft dough.

Knead on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic 2 - 5 mins). Cover and let rest on floured surface approx 15 mins.

Filling

For your filling you can use any number of things.

You can go sweet if you want and do a cream cheese and (red) jam filling.

Or you could go savory with:

Pizza filling with salami/pepperoni, olives, onions, etc...,

What I used: chicken, mushrooms, onions, and garlic all fried up together and brought down to room temp.

If you are going savoury though you will want to have a pizza sauce/tomato paste and cheese!

 Directions for assembling your mummy: Preheat oven to 375. Line cookie tray with parchment paper.

Roll a chunk of dough out in a large triangle. (How much you want to use will determine how big your mummy is. I used the above recipe and got 5 varying size mummies out of it. You can do as many or as little as you like)

Lightly score a smaller triangle inside the larger one (do not cut through the dough); make sure you leave enough room around the outside to be able to braid.

Spoon spaghetti sauce or tomato paste into smaller triangle and spread out.

Spoon filling into triangle on top of sauce. (Or layer your pizza ingredients)

Sprinkle with cheese. (Your filling needs to stay inside the smaller triangle you have scored.)

Slice a wide strip in the middle of the top of your triangle – this will be the head – and then slice 2 more strips on the top of the triangle – these will be the shoulders.

Slice approx 1 inch strips along each side of the dough, all the way to the bottom.

HEAD: gently tuck the sides of the wide strip under and then roll strip under into a largish ball.

SHOULDERS: fold shoulder strips over so they still stick out a bit, and gently press down.

BODY: Starting from the top, alternately cross the opposing left and right strips over each other until the bread is fully braided, leaving a little of the dough at the bottom for feet.

FEET: roll up dough at bottom of triangle and pinch ends into balls. If you have scraps of dough left over you can add a little to each side to make a bit bigger balls so the feet are more visible.

*Hopefully the photos help you if my instructions aren’t that clear!*

Roll out scraps of dough really thin and cut them into thin strips and lay them over the mummies in random patterns. (I thought this would help make it look more “mummy-ish”.)

Gently move mummy to cookie sheet. If desired, using a pastry brush, brush mummy with milk/egg white.

Bake at 375 for about 20 – 30 minutes, or until bread is golden brown.

You may have noticed you don’t have to let your bread proof any longer than the 15 minutes after mixing. I popped the first cookie sheet in with 2 mummies on it and let the other 3 sit on a second sheet, covered with a tea towel, while the first ones baked. The second ones turned out fine as well, even after rising for the 30 minutes. If you can fit all of your mummies into the oven at once, go for it, it will save you some time!

 Sue suggested using olive slices for eyes. I think this would make them look even spookier! I didn’t use olives in the photos as I didn't have any on hand. I will be using them when we serve them at dinner though.

Be sure to visit Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons and Blissful and Domestic and My Turn (for us) and Six Sister's Stuff for some fantastic links!!