Rainbow Bread

Note: I screwed up in my editing of this video. I put the wrong introduction in. It's not Rainbow Fudge, it's Rainbow Bread I'm making. Sorry.

     This is my first attempt at making bread from scratch. Technically, I made bread before at a Sur La Table Artisan Bread class, but I had help from a professional culinary instructor. I got my inspiration for this recipe from another YouTuber, YoYoMax12. She also made Rainbow Bread a couple of years ago and her finished product looks a lot better than mine. But that's probably because I used food dye instead of food coloring paste. In hindsight, I should've used the latter. I also should've kneaded the dough on my countertop the entire time instead of on a cutting board. Maybe I would've had a bigger loaf...

Other than that I have no regrets. I didn't use orange in my bread because my supermarket didn't carry orange food dye. Technically, I could've used a mixture of red and yellow dye but the dough ball pieces I had were so tiny, it wouldn't make sense to put that much food coloring in them. As for indigo, let's just say whoever thought indigo was part of a rainbow probably didn't have chefs in mind since it's just a mixture of blue and purple. I don't know of any food products that are indigo in color. Plus, I wouldn't know how to begin making an indigo food dye.

I chose to make rainbow bread in honor of the landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell vs. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 US states. The symbol of the LGBT movement is a rainbow flag, and #lovewins.

Quick tip: if you do choose to use food dye in your bread, you probably should take a shower as the bread is baking to remove all the dye that will inevitably be on your hands from all that kneading. Simple hand soap and water won't cut it.

The video of me making the bread is the longest I've made yet. And this post is probably the longest I've made also. But that's because making bread might be one of the hardest dishes to make from scratch apart from maybe souffle. But if you have the time, you should go ahead and try making bread. It's fun.

Cooking appliances you will need:

2 large bowls
a large whisk
a large spoon
a countertop
a bench scraper
a rolling pin or beer bottle
an oven
nonstick cooking spray
plastic wrap
5 medium bowls
pastry brush

For the actual bread ingredients, you will need:

1 cup of milk
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tbsp of melted butter(you can melt yours in the microwave for 20-25 seconds. Any longer and the butter will splatter all over the inside of the microwave)
2 1/2 tbsp of white granulated sugar
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 tbsp of salt
1 packet of Quick Rise Instant Yeast
red, yellow, green, blue, and purple food dye or food coloring paste. Orange, pink, and turquoise food dye or food coloring paste is completely optional.
water

1. Put milk and egg yolk in a microwave-safe large bowl.
2. Whisk the two ingredients together.
3. Heat in the microwave for 45-50 seconds, or until the mixture is warm to the touch.
4. Add melted butter and white granulated sugar to the large bowl.
5. Whisk the ingredients in the large bowl again until well combined.
6. In a separate large bowl, add flour and salt to it.
7. Whisk the salt into the flour.
8. Add instant yeast to the bowl with milk, egg, melted butter, and sugar in it.
9. Whisk the yeast into said bowl until well combined.
10. Add flour and salt mixture to said bowl one cup at a time. Stir using a large spoon as you pour the ingredients in.
11. Mix until you get a dough in the center of the bowl.
12. Wash your hands before you begin even touching the dough!
13. Get the dough onto the countertop using a bench scraper and/or your hands. The dough will be sticky. To make the dough less sticky, coat some flour on top of it. If your hands get sticky, add flour to your hands as well.
14. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes or until the dough is no longer sticky(it took 30 minutes for me but that's because I stupidly used a cutting board for part of the kneading process. The board was moving around too much.
15. Poke 3 holes into the dough ball.
16. Divide the dough ball into 4 smaller dough balls.
17. Cut each small dough ball in half. You should end up with 8 dough balls.
18. For the food dye option: poke a hole in each dough ball and inject food dye into the dough. Then knead the dough until the dye is distributed evenly among the dough ball. You will get dye on your hands so this is the less preferred option.
      For the food coloring paste option: Brush each dough ball with the paste and knead the paste into the dough until the coloring is distributed evenly among the dough ball. This is the better option.
19. I only used 5 of the 8 dough balls, but if you want, you can make one dough ball orange, one dough ball pink, and one dough ball turquoise. Pink and turquoise were colors on the original LGBT rainbow flag in 1978. But they were removed as flag makers found the dyes for these colors hard to find.
20. Spray each medium bowl with nonstick cooking spray so the dough ball won't stick to it.
21. Put each dough ball in a medium bowl and cover it with plastic wrap sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. Set bowl aside.
22. "Cool Trick": Remove the plastic wrap from the bowls. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with nothing in it. When it's done preheating, leave the oven on with nothing in it for 20-30 seconds. Then shut the oven off. Do not shut the oven light off. Put dough balls on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick cooking spray and place it in the off oven for 5-10
minutes, or until the dough balls have doubled in size.
23. Flatten each dough ball using a rolling pin or beer bottle. Drinking the beer is optional. :) You should start with the purple dough ball on the bottom
24. Brush the top of the flattened dough with a pastry brush that has been dipped in water. That way, the colors won't bleed into each other during the next rising and eventual baking process.
25. Repeat steps 23 and 24 and stack the flattened dough balls in this order: blue ball(yea, that didn't sound right), turquoise ball(if you made one), green ball, yellow ball, orange bowl(if you made one), red ball, and pink ball(if you made one).
26. Spray loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.
27. Place your newly formed loaf in the loaf pan.
28. Using the "cool trick" in step 22, put the loaf in off oven for 15 minutes, or until it has doubled in size.
29. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and as the oven is preheating, put the loaf pan on top of the oven to let it rise a little more.
30. Bake for 30 minutes.
31. Let the bread rest for 10 minutes. Eating bread fresh out of the oven will give you a tummy ache and you don't want that.
32. Bon appetit!

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