Last week, I was highly amused by Donna Curry’s post Bread Baking: Them Bones! from one of my favorite web publications, Serious Eats.

Bones
Yesterday, I felt inspired to try the bread bone recipe from Serious Eats. In the past, I avoided baking with yeast, out of fear. Baking is more like an exact science. However, I’ve become more confident in my bread baking skills by following the directions, retraining my modifications, and practicing. Yeast breads are more forgiving than I thought.

Notes in Hindsight:
The filling makes excess so you could make less filling or save it for a second batch of bones. You could probably freeze the excess filling for later use.

Fill the bones with any type of filling as long as its not too moist. One Serious Eats comment suggested tomato paste and cheese.

I’m not sure if my oven runs hot, but my bread only needed to bake for about 15 minutes instead of the 25 minutes stated in the original recipe. Be careful so your bones aren’t too dry.

Ingredients:
2 cups of unbleached, all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1 packet of quick rise yeast
3 Tablespoons of sugar (I used turbinado, a raw, unbleached course sugar. Substitute any sugar such as honey or brown.)
3/4 cup of water
1 teaspoon of sea salt
3 Tablespoons of butter, plus more for greasing the dough and bowl during its initial rise
1 egg, beaten, into an eggwash

Marrow:
1/4 finely chopped nuts (I finely chopped pecans to a dust. The original recipe suggests almond flour. I found refrigerated almond flour at Tochi’s for $12.  Any nut would do, but if you want to spend $12 on a bag of almond flour, knock yourself out)
1 Tablespoon of ground cinnamon
1 square of bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely
1.5 Tablespoons of sugar
1 pinch of sea salt

To Make the Bread Bones:
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.

Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the sugar, yeast, and water. Mix until it starts to hold together.  Dump the mixture onto a floured surface and knead until it feels elastic (5- 10 minutes). Sprinkle the dough with sea salt and butter and continue to knead, flouring the dough and surface as needed or until it’s not too sticky to handle. This should take about 5-10 more minutes and the dough should eventually feel smooth, elastic and not stick to the board.

Wipe a clean bowl with butter. Place the kneaded dough into the bowl and then smear the exposed surface of the dough with butter.

Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes or until doubled in size. I let dough rise on top of a preheating oven.

To Make the Marrow:
In a small bowl, mix the finely chopped nuts, chocolate, sugar, and sea salt.  That’s all.

Forming the Bones:
Place the risen dough on a floured surface, cut in half, and roll into a rectangle approximately 12X10 inches.

Cut the dough into four, even strips.

Line the middle of each strip with the sweet marrow filling, leaving some space at each end.

Smear eggwash on the outer edge of half each rectangle so you can seal in the filling.

Then, roll the dough in half, hot dog style, over the filling and seal the edges so the filling won’t leak.

Grab the dough by one end, and kind of squeeze down the length of the dough to the other end. You want to eliminate large air pockets and make sure the dough is evenly thick. This process will significantly elongate the dough rope which is OK.

Tie a knot at each end of the dough. Place the dough bones on a baking sheet lined with parchment, spacing them apart far enough that they will not touch.

Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Cover the dough bones and let them rise for another 30 minutes.

Brush the bones with eggwash.

Bake for 15-25 minutes, being careful not to over-bake.