Square watermelon bread is all the craze in Taiwan. It started with the watermelons themselves that were genetically grown into the shape of perfect squares. The novelty of these square melons were an instant trend setter.  Taiwan soon became the home of all things square watermelon from plushies, and pencils to even square melon jewelry.

These melons could have been the greatest thing since sliced bread,  but Taiwan took it one step farther still and asked why couldn’t bread look like square melons too?  The Watermelon Bread was a total sensation and even made it’s way to the US where it became the latest must try for baking enthusiasts everywhere. 

There are many sites on the net that about the watermelon bread craze, but there are few tutorials on how it is really made, so I decided to give it a try myself.  There isn’t any special bread recipe that you must use to make melon bread.  Everyone has their own favorite traditional bread recipe, so you can use whatever recipe you prefer as long as it is yeast-based.

First, a note for the fellow health nuts. Although it may be tempting to add some fiber to the bread by using whole wheat flour, the food coloring looses much of it’s luster when there is a more brownish and grainy texture from the whole wheat.  no matter how much food coloring you may try to add later, it won’t be as vibrant.  I tried using half whole wheat and flour half all purpose, and it still turned out a bit too brown.  My suggestion would be adding 1/3 whole wheat to 2/3 AP flour.

Alas, I did not have a square pan myself, so I didn’t actually make a perfectly square loaf; rather it had more of a classic melon shape.

Make your dough just like you would for normal bread, only set aside 2 cups of the flour instead of mixing it in.  Next, take you dough and divide it in half. Take one of the halfs and divide it in half again so you have a half and two separate fourths in three bowls.  The majority of the melon bread is red, so add a couple drops of red food coloring to the larger portion and color one of the smaller doughs green.  Leave the last one white.  Now that the colors are mixed into the dough, you can add the rest of the flour.  add one cup to the red dough and half a cup each to the two smaller doughs.   Adding the extra flour after the food coloring makes it easier to mix the food coloring in and saves time.  If you wish to add seeds to the melon, you can knead some raisins or chocolate chips into the red dough.

You need to shape the red dough into a log so it’s as long as your pan.  After that, roll out your uncolored dough so that it’s long and wide enough to be a blanket for your log that reaches all around.  wrap your white dough around the red dough.  you can use a bit of water or egg whites and a pastry brush to seal the seams of the white dough so that it doesn’t unravel.  next, roll out your red dough as before with the uncolored dough.  If you wish to make stripes on the outside of your bread, you can save some scraps of dough to color black.  Roll out the black dough and cut into strips placing them over the green dough. Go over the black grean dough a couple times wit the rolling pin so that the black dough is flat on the green dough. After that, all you have to do is wrap your log in the dough, seal the seams with your pastry brush with water, and bake it for the allotted time.

There weren’t any tutorials that described how to make this bread with the stripes, so when I added on the black dough, I wasn’t sure how to get it just right and simply stuck the black stripes on top of the green dough without rolling them flat together.  It wasn’t until later that I realized how rolling the two doughs together would be a much better idea.

And here you have, your own taste of this Taiwanian summer favorite!  Next time I make this bread it I plan on spicing it up with some fruity flavors.  Perhaps I will add a strawberry flavor or puree to the red dough, and a banana extract to the rind for a more refreshing spin on the melon bread.

Happy Baking!

Voila!