I have a lot of bread books on my shelf. This weekend I decided to actually use some of them, other than Peter Reinhart's that is.

Beth Hensberger's Bread Bible, Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads and Carol Fields' The Italian Baker are all accounted for. Babka, Portugesse Sweet Bread, Sour Cream Vanilla Coffee Cake and Coccodrillo.

This is my first ever Babka. I think it was the name that did it for me. It's from Bernard Clayton. It's a sweet, enriched dough. After it ferments, it gets patted into a rectangle. The dough gets schmeared with a layer of chocolate, then almond paste and the sprinkled with raisins and nuts. Then it gets rolled, twisted and coiled.

The coffee cake is courtesy of MS Hensberger. It's a quick bread as much as a cake or a bread. Sour cream adds to both the texture (really moist) and the flavor (really good). You can do it in any pan. I wanted to play with my new Bundt pan. The batter alternates with layers of brown sugar and nuts.

Mr. Clayton also contributed the Portuguese Sweet Bread. I like the way braided breads look. The dough is a lot like the babka dough and has a few raisins in just because it can.

Having satisfied my sweet tooth, it was on to the zoo. Coccodrillo is Crocodile Bread. It comes from Carol Fields' The Italian Baker via my friend Ed from King Arthur's bakingcircle.com. Done as suggested by MS Fields, this is a three day bread. The total work time for the first two days is 15 minutes.

The dough is basically a ciabatta dough, very, very slack. In the book, she says to rough the dough a large round, split it in two and fold the cut side up. Ed's addition is the use of a pan de mie pan. After the dough is cut you slide it on to parchment and then into the pan. His results are a little more dramatic. http://edsniche.photofun.com/edsbreads

The crumb was moist and tasty but it needs to be more open. I also want to work on the shape but I really like this bread.