Rainbow Bread

Why a rainbow bread? Why not?

I bake my homemade rainbow bread for my kids, it makes our mornings more joyful and colorful even if we have to get up early. I make it a sandwich bread that fits into the sandwich maker (occassionaly, I make also a regular loaf, see the photos). You can make the rainbow bread easily at home, you don't need any special supplies, just regular bread ingredients and some food colorant from the store.

If you want to see other recipes of mine and maybe get inspired, visit my page Creative Mom and you can also follow my Creative Mom Fanpage.

My bread pan is rather small so I make 2 loaf from this.

- 440 g of all-purpose flour

- 8 g of salt

- 10 g of sugar

- 125 g of milk

- 174 g of water

- 20 g of active yeast or 7g of dried yeast

- 3 tbsp of softened unsalted butter

- food colorant in gel, at least the following colors: red, yellow, blue, black - make sure the colorants have no flavour so your bread tastes like bread

- rectangle bread pan

1. Heat the milk just a little bit to be lukewarm. Mix in the yeast sugar and stir. Let is work in a warm place for 10-15 minutes, the yeast will activate. Then add flour, salt, water and butter and knead until the dough is smooth.

2. Divide the dough in 7 equal parts and put the colorant in the middle. If you don't have the exact colors but you have the basic four, here's how you mix the other colors of the rainbow:

- orange = red + yellow

- indigo = blue + black

- green = blue + yellow

- purple = blue + red

3. Knead each piece of dough until the color is distributed evenly. This migh take some time and also dont worry if the dough isn't colored 100 % evently, some colorants are really tough in this aspect but the color will unify a little while the dough rests and even more when it bakes. Do you see my blue? It just wouldn't color well. Hoever, look at the baked bread, the colors are beautifully vibrant, everything is colored perfectly.

1. Take the first color and roll it out or between two sheets of baking paper or on a table that you've springled with some flour. In this case you need to sprinkle also the dough itself. You don't need to roll it out too thin, just a little.

2. Add another color on top of the first layer and roll it out again. Continue in the same fashion with the remaining colors.

3. Try to make the layers evenly large. I sometimes stretch the new layer with my hands before rolling it.

4., 5. Fold the dough in half, if you were rolling it on a baking sheet, the sheet will help you with the folding.

6. Grease the bread pan and put the dough in it. Let it rise, the time needed depends on the temperature, it can vary from 30 to 90 minutes.

7. Preheat the oven on 180 °C and then bake the bread for 40 minutes. Take it out and let it cool down before cutting.

Enjoy!