EnRICHed dough...
I should think so with this amount of ingredients!  This Apricot Couronne is definitely a step up from the last few weeks of basic components.

Another first
Having never made an enriched dough, I wondered what the difference would be compared to making a regular bread dough. According to the voice over given by Mel & Sue when dealing with an enriched dough you have a work harder than with regular bread dough. The kneading is just as, if not more, important with this type of dough because the addition of the butter and eggs. It makes it particularly wet, meaning that the yeast will have to work harder to rise.  And they weren’t kidding.  I was looking a this mound of sticky, very wet dough wondering if this was what it was meant to be like, and not seeing how it was ever going to come together. I avoided the temptation to add more flour and kept at it, once I had past the 12 minute marker, I could see a change, not only in my tired and worn wrists but also the dough. It had finally started to come together into a less sticky dough, and I could see in-between my fingers without any dough webbing! I continued to need it for another few minutes until I was happy with this texture and elasticity. Now I had to leave it to rise using the tried and proved (pardon the pun) method of the warmed oven, in the absence of a warming drawer.

Hard working yeast
They weren’t kidding when they said it the yeast had to work harder.  I took the beast part of 2 hours for this dough baby to rise.  I was reluctant to take it out of its warm enclosure, but I was on a deadline, I had friends coming for dinner and needed to get a wriggle on! Once the dough was removed it was knocked back by having to roll it into a nice rectangle approximately 33x25cm/13x10in. Mid roll I realised that I didn’t have a long enough ruler, or even find the short 15cm one, but the boyfriend can to the rescue with a metal tape measure, grimy but it worked!

Rich goodiness
While the yeast was working its magic during the first prove, I made the filling.  I decided to go old school with this and used the good old wooden spoon rather than the electric whisk.  You can’t beat (ha ha!) a bit of elbow grease! You have to soak the dried apricots in the orange juice to ensure that they are nice and plump, I added the raisins to the juice too. I know, I know, that is straying slightly away from the recipe but my raisins were a little dry looking and no one likes as dry wrinkled chewy raisin! Once the butter was nice and soft and creamed together with the sugar you add all of the rest of ingredients for the filling, and mix well.  It smelt pretty good, mainly because of the orange zest.

Spread the love
One the dough had risen and been rolled out is was now time for the build! First the filling was spread all over the rectangle, then the whole thing had to be rolled up, lengthways, so you ended up with a long sausage! Now came the tricky it, the rope
ring.  I had to cut it down the middle, lengthways along the roll, but leave the top joined together.

Lets do the Twist
After watching the programme, seeing the results and listening to the judges comments it was clear that Ruby’s was one of the better rings.  Ruby had twisted each strand of the dough before then twisting them together, so I decided to do the same. This was a lot easier said than done, not only was it very sticky, it also made the dough stretch, which made the likelihood of it fitting onto my baking tray less and less.   Once the two strands were twisted, then twisted together, it was time to shape them into a ring, join the ends and transfer that to tray.

Hard working yeast Part 2
After a bit of adjustment here and there I was kind of happy with the shape that I was now looking at, and it was tme to cover and leave to prove again.  This time you had to cover the whole tray with a plastic bag to stop a crust from forming and or the filling drying out.  Using my improvised proving draw technique, i had to make sure it wasn’t so warm that it would melt the bag and plus that there was enough space around bag for the dough to rise again.  Finding a bag big enough was a little tricky, especially trying to find one that wasn’t a bin bag! Thank fully there was a delivery at work that was packaged in a large enough bag, so even if I did get some funny looks when I stuffed it gleefully into my bag, I had something that would work.

Slightly over proved…
As I mentioned earlier we had some friends coming over for lunch/dinner so I kind of forgot about the ring in the cooking of the meal.  This meant that when I did check on the ring, it had risen well, but then fell slightly when I took it out of the improvised warming drawer to heat the oven up to temperature. Eek, but I’m sure it’ll rise some more in the oven…right?
Well it did rise a bit more in the oven but not as much as I would of liked. But it smelt fantastic while it was cooking.

Finishing Touches
By the time the couronne was cooked, and cooled down slightly it was really late in the evening and I was a bit tired. Pathetic I know, I mean it was only a whole day of cooking for 6, baking a couronne plus a toddler running around (not mine)!  This state of mind is not one to have when you are toasting flaked almonds….they can catch if you are not watching them like a hawk, or if you are trying to warm apricot jam, for the glaze, on another ring of the hob at the same time! Hey ho, I threw most of the burnt almonds in the bin, and let them cool while brushing the still warm couronne with the glaze, which was made using my mum’s homemade jam.

Making water icing always reminds me of my days at play scheme that used to be held at my primary school during the summer holidays.  We made coloured water icing and decorated rich tea biscuits…simple but great fun when your a kid. After this nostalgic moment while mixing the icing, I drizzled it over the ring, and then sprinkled over the remaining toasted almonds.

Glaze covers a multitude of sins!
As you can see from the picture below the couronne did catch slightly in the oven on the left hand side,  and it was a little flatter than the ones on the show, but smelt festive and tasted delicious.  I will definitely be doing this again.  Maybe with a mincemeat filling instead?