Masala Tea Infused Spiced Chai Bread: The Recipe

Masala tea has solidified itself in the hierarchy of teas worldwide with its unique flavor profile that is consistent throughout its many other known forms. That’s what makes the chai tea spices so versatile, especially in making desserts and pastries. Masala tea is so versatile that it can even be used to bake bread!

Read below and learn how you can use Chai Up’s Masala Powder Mix in your favorite baked goods!

The Unique Flavors of Masala Chai

Masala chai tea may have originated from India, but it has become one of the most universally loved teas. Regardless of its many known forms, the masala chai spices retain their rich flavor profile that permeates whether through chai lattes or baked goods!

More recently, people have been trying to fuse other foods and beverages with the flavors of masala tea ingredients. Instead of just pairing foods with the well-loved masala chai, people have found ways to actually eat it! Masala chai has been enjoyed for thousands of years in India, but today, it is enjoyed worldwide in the form of lemonade, creamsicles, marshmallows, ice cream, pie, cupcakes, and so much more!

Despite it morphing into different foods, the flavors of masala are consistent and constant. Not only that but by using Chai Up’s masala powder mix in other food recipes, you can also retain the health benefits and culture of masala chai tea. Healthine attributes drinking masala chai with improved heart health, reduced blood sugar, improved digestion, and so much more. 

How To Make Chai with Chai Up

One of the most important lessons in using masala tea and incorporating it into other foods is learning how to make it. Chai Up’s masala powder mix might look easy enough to add to doughs or batter as a dry ingredient but doing so might not actually produce the flavor you’re looking for. To really activate the flavors of masala, the powder mix has to be steeped in water just like regular tea. 

What makes Chai Up’s masala powder mix such a great product is that it is so convenient to use. Instead of gathering masala chai tea ingredients like cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods and having to manually grind them up, you can get all the flavors of Chai Up’s 11-ingredient mix, without the hassle but with all the benefits.

Follow our chai recipe here that you can eventually use an ingredient in other recipes:

Masala Tea Ingredients:

1. Chai Up’s Masala Powder Mix

2. Black tea bags or black loose-leaf tea

3. Water

4. Sugar (Optional)

The Masala Chai Recipe and Tips:

• Each masala chai-infused recipe will call for different amounts of chai to be added but it usually won’t be more than 1 cup depending on the recipe yield you’re following too. To make the chai needed for bread recipes, it would be convenient to start with just 1 cup of water to start.
• Bring some water to a boil in a small saucepan.
• Add 1 black tea bag or 1 tablespoon of black loose-leaf tea.
• While the tea is brewing, you can start to add 1 tsp of Chai Up’s Masala Powder Mix. Depending on how rich you want the masala flavor to be, you can either add less or more. Chai Up’s masala powder mix is on the milder spicy side so you can even get away with adding at least 2 teaspoons. Ultimately, the best thing about using Chai Up is it's easier to gauge how much of the spices you want to add, making your recipes easier and more consistent!
• Depending on what the recipe calls for, you can either add your sugar now or later. For sweet desserts, sugar is usually a separate ingredient which means you can either sweeten or chai beforehand or not. For chai bread, you might want to make it sweet by adding the sugar in the tea because bread recipes don’t call for much sugar. If you don’t want your bread sweet you can skip the sweetening step altogether.
• After at least 5 to 8 minutes, you can take your chai off the heat and let it cool on the side while you prepare your other baking ingredients. As to not disrupt the cooking process of some batters, it would be best to let your chai cool off completely before incorporating it with other ingredients. 
• You might notice that we didn’t need milk to be added to the recipe. Since we’re brewing chai specifically to make other foods, depending on the recipe, milk might also be a separate ingredient or it doesn’t need to be added at all. We want the masala chai spices ingredients rather than the sweetness from sugar or the creaminess from milk to seep into the food.

All About Bread

Bread can be intimidating to try and bake on your own and so much easier to just buy from your favorite bakery and enjoy immediately. There’s something very special about successfully raising bread dough, kneading it, and baking it. It’s quite a tedious process, baking bread, but it’s fun and surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it. 

There are plenty of bread variations and each region of the world has its own way of making it. Some notably easy kinds of breads to bake are focaccias from Italy, pandesals from the Philippines, and then there are more complex types of breads like baguettes and croissants from France. 

When we think of bread in its simplest form, it always comes down to the loaf. There are plenty of varieties of loaf bread too, including the famous banana bread. If you want an introductory recipe to making bread, banana bread is probably the best place to start because it's fairly easy and doesn’t make use of yeast which can be the most challenging part of baking bread. Banana bread also doesn’t need to be baked and is made in a way more similar to cake making than bread baking. 

Complex bread recipes could take a whole day of preparation. Most doughs need to rise for a couple or more hours then kneaded. Bread making also requires a technique called “stretching and pulling” where you literally stretch and pull the side parts of the dough and fold it into itself. This method makes your bread fluffy and creates starch. 

The recipe we’ll share with you today that uses masala tea as an ingredient is as easy as making banana bread. That means you can have a loaf of chai bread in just an hour. Read the recipe below to learn how!

How To Make Spiced Chai Bread With Masala Tea

If you want something like banana bread but want a little more spice to balance the sweetness, you might want to try and substitute bananas with masala chai! It sounds a little unreal to combine masala tea and bread but it’s surprisingly good. A slice of spiced chai bread would go well with a hot cup of coffee or even a cup of masala chai tea. 

For this recipe, you’re going to need a bread pan and the prep time for this recipe is approximately 10 minutes. The bake time will take at most an hour and this recipe yields one loaf of bread. 

Spiced Chai Bread Ingredients:

1. ½ cup of softened unsalted butter
2. ¾ cups of granulated white or brown sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 2 tsp vanilla extract
5. ½ cup of chai tea mixture (recipe stated earlier)
6. ⅓ cup of milk
7. 2 cups of all-purpose flour
8. 2 tsp baking powder
9. ½ tsp salt
10. ½ tsp ground cinnamon

For the glaze:

1. 1 cup of powdered sugar
2. ¼ tsp of vanilla extract
3. 3 tsp of milk

Method:

1. If you haven’t already, start by making your masala chai so it can have time to cool down before you add it to the batter.
2. Preheat your oven to 177° C or 350° F.
3. Grease a small or medium-sized bread pan with nonstick cooking spray or oil. 
4. Start with incorporating your wet ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Beat the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, tea, and milk together. To make sure you don’t get any sugar lumps, it’s best to use a stand or hand mixer. 
5. In small batches, slowly add in the flour to the wet batter. 
6. Then add the baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. 
7. Slowly pour your bread batter into the pan, making sure it’s spread evenly. 
8. Bake the bread for at least 30 to 50 minutes. The middle part of the loaf will rise the most. To see if the bread is not raw, stick a toothpick in the middle of the bread and if it comes out clean without wet batter clinging on, your bread is done!
9. Cool down your spiced chai bread after baking so you can add the glaze. 
10.  To make the glaze, stir all 3 ingredients together until smooth. Pour on top of the cooled spiced chai bread and enjoy!

Why Choose Chai Up?

Who knew masala chai tea recipes would come in handy for making pastries and bread? Well, the founders of Chai Up definitely wanted to make all masala chai lovers’ lives easier. By compacting all 11 premium ingredients of their family’s masala chai recipe and turning it into a powder, the unique flavors of masala can easily be brewed at any given time of the day and it’s now also easier to add into other food recipes. 

If you haven’t had a chance to try it, now’s the best time to while following more of our other masala chai recipes. Order now and join us in unleashing the flavor revolution with Chai Up!