Tiger Bread – attempt no.1

We all love tiger bread in this house and generally end up buying a massive loaf almost every weekend so I hunted down a recipe and thought I would try my hand at making it myself.  As there is no real recipe give on a  Google search, various bloggers and forum posters have came up with recipes and what they think goes into the bread. It seems that yeast, rice flour, sesame (some use, some don’t), sugar and water are the key ingredients, I also read somewhere that malt extract is added. So from the various websites, I started with a mix-match of recipes and crossed my fingers!  The main part of the recipe came from here.

I started with making my regular loaf (apparently Tiger Bread is simply a white loaf with the paste spread on during the second rising process.  I usually use the fast yeast but only had the stuff that you have to prepare ahead – I bought it in error and had never used it before, so was a bit of a trial run in itself and unfortunately, the bread was far too yeasty to eat.  So, I made the dough in my food mixer and set it off to rise for an hour.  About 15 minutes before the end of the hour, I began with the tiger paste.  Once the dough was ready for its second rise, I spread the paste on the top.  After 30 minutes of proving, I popped it in the oven and waited impatiently for it to bake.

Well as you can see, it looks like Tiger Bread but it didn’t taste like Tiger Bread.  Like I said, the bread was too yeasty (have now bought the fast bake yeast again!) and the top was also very yeasty and far too sesame’y’.

So changes to make next time will be, leave out the malt extract, try with the fast bake yeast and a lot less toasted sesame oil.

The recipe below is assuming that the white bread dough has already been mixed and left to rise for an hour, punched down and ready to be left to rise for a second time.

Tiger Paste

1 1/2 tsp yeast
65ml warm water
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp sesame oil

60g brown rice flour

1 tsp malt extract

Mix together tiger paste ingredients and leave for 15 min. You may need to add a bit more warm water to loosen the paste

Preheat oven to gas mark 7/220C/425F

Spread tiger paste on to the surface of the bread and leave to prove for 30 minutes

Bake bread for 30 minutes at the given temperature or until loaf is ready.  If you tap the base of the bread and it sounds hollow the bread is cooked.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.