Vegemite Cheesy Scrolls for Australia Day

Happy Australia Day!

Tomorrow, we are celebrating Australia Day and it's time again to fire up our Barbie to enjoy lots of sausages.

Last year for this day, I made a classic trifle with an Aussie iconic Aeroplane jelly. And this year, we are eating Vegemite!

As what Wikipedia describes, Vegemite is a dark brown Australian food paste made from yeast extract. It has a great salty taste and is usually eaten with a toast, sandwich or cracker biscuit. I think Vegemite is a great vegetarian food and love eating Vegemite with cheese. Best of all, I enjoy eating Vegemite in the form of cheesy scrolls especially when they are freshly baked from any local bakeries. For this post, I am making my own freshly baked Vegemite cheesy scroll, all from scratch using a brioche recipe from the book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.

The brioche recipe that I am using is the poor man's brioche which contains lesser butter than the other two recipes. This brioche bread is surprising quite light and spongy and does compliment the both tasty cheese and Vegemite very well.

The Vegemite that I'm using is for babies! LOL! It's very mild in taste and has 50% less sodium. Even my husband who doesn't like Vegemite, didn't mind eating these scrolls.

A mini plain brioche from the other half of the dough

I took a closer look of the scrolls... A spongy bread with buttery plus cheesy Vegemite taste...Nice!

Here's the recipe from the book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.
(with my modifications and notes in blue)

Sponge

1/2 cup unbleached bread flour

2 tsp instant yeast

1/2 cup milk, lukewarm

Dough

4 eggs, lightly beaten

3 1/4 cups unbleached bread flour

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1 1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 egg, whisked until frothy for egg wash (replaced by milk)

To make the sponge:

Stir together the flour and yeast in a large mixing bowl (or in the bowl of an electric mixer). Stir in the milk until all flour is hydrated. Cover with plastic wrap and ferment for 30 to 45 min, or until the sponge rises and then falls when you tap the bowl. (Note: This sponge has quite a high amount of liquid and it is runny, not solid.)

To make the dough:

Add the eggs to the sponge and whisk until smooth. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, sugar and salt. Add this mixture to the sponge and eggs and stir until all ingredients are hydrated and evenly distributed. Let this mixture rest for 5 min so that the gluten can begin to develop. Then, while mixing with a large spoon, gradually work in the butter, about one quarter at a time, waiting until each addition of butter assimilates before adding more.

Transfer the dough to the counter and knead for 10 min, adding small amounts of flour as needed, until the dough is very smooth and soft, but not too sticky to handle.

Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl. Mist the top of the dough with spray oil and cover with plastic wrap. Ferment for about 90 min, or until the dough doubles in size.

Proceed with shaping. Allow proofing for 1 hr. Bake at 180°C for 15 or up to 50 min depending on the size of bread.

Note:

I have made a bread dough using 1/2 of the recipe. I divided the dough into half.

For the first half, I've shaped it into a mini loaf (250g).
For the other dough, I've rolled it into a 20 x 20 cm square flat dough. I spread 2 to 3 tbsp of Vegemite on the rolled dough surface, sprinkled 1/4 cup of grated cheese on the Vegemite, rolled the dough like a Swiss roll and cut each with 3 cm thickness. With this quantity, I can make 7 Vegemite scrolls.

Both breads were baked at 160°C fan forced. The scrolls were baked for 15 min and the mini loaf was baked for 20 min.

Extra! extra! Why am I baking the mini brioche loaf?

To transform it to nice buttery and crunchy salad croutons! The plain brioche bread is cut into 0.5 cm cubes, sprayed briefly with rice bran oil spray and baked for 10-15 min at 180°C fan forced with 2-3 tossing when baking in order to get even distribution of golden brown in each crouton. Yum!

Happy Australia Day and Happy Baking

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