Two weeks ago, The Ghoulfriend and I were inspired by a video posted last year which has been resurfacing again this season. In it, Nikk Alcaraz (@practicalpeculiarities on Instagram) promotes his Halloween-themed cookbook, Peculiar Baking, by showing a sneak peak of one of his recipes: Toad Bread!
This is what we were attempting to recreate:
Click above image for Instagram video
We both knew that we had to attempt something similar, but Alcaraz hadn't published his recipe online anywhere, and since we didn't have his cookbook, we decided to do some internet research and try our own hand at it. Eventually, we found this recipe for Frog Bread from The Fresh Loaf!
It's your average basic dense bread recipe. They shaped it into a frog, but we wanted to use the same recipe and make it more toad-like as Alcaraz does in his video.
We followed the recipe instructions pretty closely, but perhaps not close enough... *dramatic foreshadowing*
The Fresh Loaf's recipe instructed us to let the dough rise for 90 minutes, then shape it into a frog and cover loosely with a towel, letting it rise for one more hour. Here is where we messed up. We lost track of time during the second, post-shaping rise.
Meaning our toad went from this:
To THIS:
A rather plump fellow! We would have been happy with our unexpectedly big-boned toad, but by over-proofing the dough, all the gluten had begun to lose its strength! As soon as I began shifting it into the oven, our poor boy began to deflate.
After applying an egg wash and baking him one rack-height too high, we had our own "Toad" Bread!
The air bubbles did make some fun warts though!
Despite bearing a closer resemblance to Lepidobatrachus laevis than Bufo bufo (though the former is nicknamed "Freddy Kreuger frog" so at least it's still Halloween-y!) our bread was delicious! I have no doubt The Fresh Loaf's recipe would have worked fine without our proofing mistakes.
But the most ironic part? On the very same evening, Nikk Alcaraz actually posted his full original Toad Bread recipe on YouTube! After a year of it being exclusive to his cookbook, he posts it for free mere hours after we tried to emulate it. So now, of course, we'll be attempting it again!
Ain't that just the way...
Still tasty, though!
Stay tuned for Attempt 2!
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