King Hawaiian Loaf

 With a recipe for homemade King Hawaiian Rolls & Loaf in hand, I decided to try it. We stopped at the grocery for a can of pineapple juice, the only ingredient we were missing. The recipe I used is available here. I cut the recipe in half, making only a single loaf for testing purposes.

 This is really an easy loaf to make and every step worked out perfectly. The tropical scent of pineapple is wonderful, even during the assembly phase and it lingers even as the loaf is baked and taken out of the oven. The bread is only slightly sweet and should make wonderful toast.

 Here's the end result first:

 And a look inside. Beautiful texture, finely-grained and with the lovely sweet scent of pineapple coming off the slice. The vanilla adds a nice note, too. Don't leave it out.

 This takes about two and a half hours once the ingredients are combined but that's certainly not unusual for any kind of homemade bread.

 Here's the initial mixture (remember, I made just half a recipe). This mixture is not kneaded but rather just left in the mixing bowl and sat in a warm place. Since it's a winter's day, I turned the oven on just long enough to warm it a bit (maybe 100°) and then placed the bowl there for the first hour's rise.

 After an hour the mixture looked like this. It clearly doubles in size. The remaining flour is added to this mixture (it is quite sticky and would be impossible to handle otherwise) and then turned out onto a floured pastry cloth for kneading.

 I added 1/4 cup of flour as I worked the mixture on our pastry cloth. It lightens quite a bit. The dough was of a perfect consistency ... slightly warm, "soft as a babies butt" and it seemed alive (it is) and bounced back as I kneaded it over a dozen times (I didn't count; I just work the dough until it feels right). There is nothing in baking so nice as fresh dough! Bread dough is the sensual part of baking.
 This dough is then shaped and placed in a greased baking pan and allowed to rise another hour. It doubled in that time.

 Here's how the dough looked after the second rise described above. This is a delicate stage and you have to be careful with the loaf. No rough handling! This is the "baby's butt" turned into the whole baby. This loaf is now ready to bake. The instructions say 25-30 minutes. I took this out after 27 minutes as it seemed to be browning nicely on top.

 Turned out of the pan and with a little melted butter added to the top, the loaf will need some cooling time before slicing. Yes, it's hard to wait!

 And here's a top-down view of the completed loaf. Let it sit until it begins to cool (30 minutes to an hour if you can wait that long) and then slice.
 Now, go back up to the top of the page and look at the finished product again. Better yet, bake a loaf!