Vanilla Chai Swirl Pull-Apart Bread

If you think I’m pandering with this one, you’d be right. Just straight-up, unabashed Pinterest-driven pandering, and I suppose I’ve no shame in my bread-baking game. Yes friends, this Vanilla-Chai Swirl Pull-Apart bread is meant to please the masses, what with her glossy blanket of vanilla-spiked glaze, and her doughy, brioched fluffiness, and let’s not forget the near hypnotic swirl of spiced brown sugar that winds its way throughout the entire loaf (blech. loaf. what an unappealing food word … right up there with bologna and chop suey). Ahem. Anywho. Initially I was going to just go with Cinnamon Swirl Pull-Apart Bread, but took it a step further by adding in the chai component, what with the MASS APPEAL of chai spiced everything. It’s almost caught up to pumpkin spice, me thinks. {I kid. That’s probably not possible.}

Perhaps I’m being too transparent here … pulling back the curtain of food bloggery a smidge. But yes; sometimes you throw a recipe out into the ether because you simply want loads of people to enjoy it. Of course you always want people to enjoy your food – yes, certainly – but there are times when you just want to nail it. Like those days in high school when you choose your outfit with just a little more care, paying a little extra attention to the bits and pieces, because you’re just having one of those days; you just want a real banger of a recipe with which to excite the masses. Yes, today is one of those days.

And so. It only logically follows that, given our simple objective, the recipe should have some solid heavy-hitters going on inside, so far as the ingredients are concerned. With this bread, I thought it would be fun to really super-charge the vanilla flavor in the glaze, and if you have vanilla beans or vanilla bean paste, then this is the exact perfect time to use them (I know it’s hard to part with pricy items such as those).

How to Make Pull-Apart Bread

Alright, so this recipe reads a little long, but the actual execution of it is akin to things you’d have done in kindergarten craft time – it’s really easy, y’all. We’ll build a brioche-ish dough, fortified with eggs and butter, and the let it rise and proof and then we’ll give it the ole what-for by punching the heck out of it – yes it’s as fun as it sounds if you’ve never done it. After bread dough has proofed (risen) for a while, doubling in its size, it needs to be manually deflated before rolling and working, so a swift punch in the proverbial face always does the trick. And by face I mean dough. We’re just punching down some dough.

After the proof-punch-and roll out (into a large rectangle) we’ll cover the dough with softened butter – an anchorage for the sweet cinnamon sugar I like to say – and then shower that with our glorious chai-spiced brown sugar mixture.

But What is Chai Spice?

Well, “chai” actually just means “tea,” and I’ve had more than a few Indian friends chuckle at how often the word is misused in today’s vernacular. But, regardless of its correctness, these days when you hear or see something that is “chai-spiced,” you can assume that it’s going to contain the traditional flavors of a masala chai – a beautifully spiced, Assam black tea-based concoction from India. Truthfully? It’s one of my favorite things around.

Chai’s history goes back thousands of years and is steeped (ha!) in folk lore and tales of herbal medicine and royal birth. The varieties you see all over the world today are iterations of ancient masala chai, and they usually contain a consistent combination of spices to give chai its beloved warmth and bold flavor that is really unlike anything else.

Common Masala Chai Spices:

• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Cloves
• Cardamom
• Black Pepper

For our purposes in today’s recipe, we’re going to lean on the turbo boosting flavor powers of the first four ingredients listed above. That said, if you want to add some black pepper – DO IT! Would be lovely. Also, to double-down on the chai-effect here, you could steep the milk in the glaze with a bag of masala chai, infusing the flavors right into the liquid. Then, that milk will lend those chai notes to the glaze and would – if I’m doing my math right – be totally and completely wonderful.

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