This is a special day. It's World Bread Day again and this marks 1 year in bread baking experiments for me and it has been a wonderful year of learning the virtue of patience. I've blogged on 19 different breads and have baked some more that I didn't blog about. I am truly grateful to Zorra of 1 x umrühren bitte for this event and for helping me discover the joy of bread baking!

It's a brand new recipe this week from Peter Reinhart's new book Whole Grain Breads. This is my first real time baking with steam and even if it wasn't as steamy as I would like, the crust made music as my teeth sunk into it. What a feeling! I used to have all these phobias about creating steam but I thought this is the day to do it. It really isn't as frightful as it sounds - ok maybe it is, after all it took me a year to attempt steam. It's worth it and now there are new bread experiments to try with steam!

This is a healthy hearty loaf. Full of seeds, made with whole wheat, rye and bread flour this loaf has substance. Just on it's own, the fusion of flavours still lingers after the first tasting, the photo taking and now the blogging. Very yummy! I am so pleased with how this turned out and may I say a little proud of myself with this loaf marking a great year in bread baking!

Tags: Seed, Peter Reinhart, World Bread Day, German-style

Thought I should give sourdough another go - a simpler version. I wanted to try introducing steam today but failed. I was going to use the ice cube method but realised at the last minute that my fridge no longer produced ice (or iced water)! So silly that I didn't check it before. So thought I'd quickly try to boil water - then that was taking too long so ... no steam for bread today.

This was different compared to my previous attempt with sourdough rye. I did encounter some problems with my firm starter - it didn't rise for many many hours. I am suspecting that my culture is actually dormant and I will probably need to wash and reactivate it. So in view of the culture not working too well (although the flavours came through), I added 1½ Tspn of Instant yeast to give it the extra lift it needed. This was otherwise a much firmer and manageable dough, better for newbies. I've also introduced 10% of rye into the flour mixture. I will probably give this recipe another attempt using refreshed culture.

Everything was less than ideal but it was quite a relief that at least the flavours came through. It had balanced flavours with a nutty hint of rye. It was quite a wholesome feeling. I went on and made bruschetta with it. It was wonderful, flavourful and much relished!

Tags: Sourdough,

I've finally gotten round to it, making Sourdough Rye bread. I haven't really been spending a lot of time baking in the last months and forgotten how long you need in preparation for bread baking. This is my first time making Sourdough Rye and I think I might have added just a teeny tiny bit too much culture because the final result was a little too tart to my liking. Then again, it might be the case that I left the sourdough to ferment more hours than usual. I'm not too sure.

This recipe also created a very hydrated dough. I'm not very experienced in handling wet dough so I added more flour to have it hold up a little more and made it easier to shape. This time round I also decided to use a thermometer to measure internal temperatures to be certain the insides were done. I was so idiotic too with this part too because the recipe reads in Fahrenheit and my thermometer was in Celsius but somehow thought it was reading in Fahrenheit and of course I thought "No no! The insides still not done!!" The thermometer came out with tiny bits of wet dough on it so I decided to bake it some more. I then proceeded to check the conversions of what it should be and realised 10-15 minutes later that my bread was already done and I'm just getting the tops of my bread burnt!

Also what is quite lacking from this experiment is steam - I've yet to be courageous enough to spray or introduce water in an extremely hot oven. The last thing I need is shattered bits of oven glass all over my kitchen and the stress that comes with it! This was nonetheless an interesting experiment! I need more practice! This recipe is taken from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. Apart from the slightly over-tartness of the bread, I quite enjoyed the flavour of rye and flax in this. It has a lovely texture to it, not to chewy or dry - nice strong crumb.

I'm not sure if it's fate or coincidence but I'm so glad I can now participate in the new food blog event Bread Baking Day #03 originally created by Zorra (Goddess of wonderful food blog events)! This time round it's hosted by Ulrike of Küchenlatein who is a wonderful cook and regular of food blog events, so I am quite certain it will be a success!! I've been meaning to take part but been too busy and only just minutes before realising the theme for this month's Bread Baking Day is Sourdough Rye!

Tags: Sourdough, Rye, Flaxseeds,, BBD #3

It's Vesak Day (Buddha's Birthday & Public Holiday) today and so thought I'd try out a recipe from one of my new cookbooks, Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. Let me first clarify, until my eyes laid upon the recipe I had no idea what Bialys (Bee-ah-lees) were, so while I thought they looked and tasted pretty good, I have nothing to compare it to. I of course still did some research and looked at some images for reference and I think... I'm doing okay for a beginner.

It's supposed to be like a bagel but without the hole but with a depression in the center for for an onion filling. Though it's not quite as dense, it's chewier like a super thick pizza crust! The natural flavour of the dough really comes through and it is beautiful. I really liked it! It's pretty easy to prepare, just simple steps between a few hours - if you have the time. Great for breakfast, lightly toasted have it plain or with a generous amount of cream cheese! Mmm!

Kossar's Bialys in New York is apparently the best place (in the world) to get yourself an original Bialy. So if you haven't already patronised their fine establishment, please do so on my behalf!

Tags: Bread, Chewy

It was another Big Bread weekend! Inspired by the wonderful recipes from my two brand new Bread baking books, Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers and Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes (There was a sale at Kinokuniya). Reinhart's new book Whole Grain Bread: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor - which I am eagerly anticipating, is in the press as we speak and should be out in stores in September.

I made 3 different types of bread: The Austrian Sourdough Wheat Rye failed terribly. For some reason every time I bake something from Classic Sourdoughs by Ed Wood, the breads turn out really very wet. Has anyone else encountered similar problems? I also finally made The New York Times No-Knead Bread and I almost had it perfect, so I will try again next week and will blog about it. And I have been wanting to try out baking with terra-cotta flowerpots for a while now and I thought I'd stick to a recipe that was safe and fool-proof, seeing how the previous 2 experiments didn't go through too well...

So here's presenting Banana Bread in Terra-cotta Flower Pots!! Aren't they the cutest things! Terra-cotta pots practical and great for baking breads because of how wonderfully and evenly it distributes heat to the dough. They have to be unglazed terra-cotta pots or you might be seriously poisoned by lead compounds from the glaze. You will need to "season" the pots first before baking (of course). I bought mine for $1 each from Ikea. Wash them thoroughly (remove the very sticky price tag too), dry it well and rub some vegetable oil on both the inside and outside the pot. Preheat your oven to the max. Leave pots to absorb the oil and repeat until it stops absorbing, because of its porous nature it will be extremely absorbent so be patient. Bake pots on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet in the oven for half and hour. Leave to cool completely before using it. Do not wash after use, wipe clean with a paper towel to remove any access oil and it is ready for use.

This Banana Bread recipe is from Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers. It's a quick bread - more like a larger version of a muffin. This was a big hit when I brought it to work the following day and I promise if you do the same you will be very popular with your colleagues. This was very moist and richly flavourful. I had added 1 too much a banana and this made it crumble easily because it was just way too much goodness!

I'm in the need for comfort food. Rich foods (equals fatty foods). I'm not usually known to finish a whole tub of Ben & Jerry's (Chubby Hubby's my Fav!) all on my own, stuff my face with cheesecake (it was offered to me) even when I was full, and have chocolate molten lava cake a few hours later or gorge on a variety of Thai tourist snacks (they were lying on the table calling my name!) some people brought back on from recent trips to Chiang Mai and Melbourne. I usually have more self control and concern about failing to fit into my shrinking pants.

I'm depressed. My wonderful and most incredible pet companion died last week. We've had him with us for 15 years, 4 months and 22 days. That's half my life - we grew up together. He was very healthy (he loved jumping and fooling around) up until the start of this year he started to age and became old. I knew it was time for him we were very lucky to have him as part of the family, he gave us so much love and joy. I called him my Sunshine Day because he made my day all bright and beautiful. It's been different without his presence at home. Empty. Which of course explains the rush to fill the void with rich rich foods.

So I bake Brioche. It's part of the grieving process. Brioche is the richest bread ever. I chose to make the Middle Class Brioche instead of the Rich Man's Brioche because even I am depressed now, I'll be more depressed if I have to buy new clothes to fit my expanding waistline.

The warm buttery aroma combined with the beautifully flakey, fluffy and oh so moist texture of the freshly baked Brioche was worth the very long baking process. It almost filled the empty void.

I wanted to bake something special for Good Friday & Easter. And of course, being the good example of a bad Catholic girl, I thought, "Jesus must've eaten Challah?!" I've got the recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice : Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. It'll surely be great! So the night before Good Friday I looked through the recipe, made sure I had everything I needed, measured ingredients and began mixing and autolysing. While autolysing I thought I'd read up more about Challah. Then I wanted to kick myself.

So Stupid! They ate unleavened bread during Passover! Not celebration breads! So I quickly googled for Matzo recipes hoping to save myself from the fires of hell for my totally blasphemous act. I was stuck with guilt and half-kneaded Challah dough on Holy Thursday.

I continued kneading in my beloved KitchenAid KPM50, while I started to prepare my own version of Matzo. Left the Challah dough in the fridge to refrigerate for 2 days - which was a good plan because the flavours were AMAZING!

I know technically it's a Jewish celebration bread - hardly Catholic or Roman in any way. And I'm Chinese in Singapore. So I know there is no real connection here... I just needed an excuse to bake pretty braided breads! It turned out so great! And I baked it on Easter too!

I hope I'm not going to hell for this.

I made Naan Flatbread and I made it with sourdough! It was very exciting! Although not really true or accurate, because I don't think there's sourdough in Naans. The sourness usually comes from the yoghurt - which I realised at the last minute I forgot to buy so I used sourdough starter instead. I've been scouring through the internet the past week for Naan recipes because it was my Dad's Birthday over the weekend and he loves flat breads, so I thought I'd make him Naan. And I stumbled upon the blog entry of Il Forno - and there I learnt how Naan was made with the help of Julia Child. I know, it's not really authentic or Indian made but still I think it's a good start.

The final taste was beautifully sourdoughy. Haha - not quite Naan in flavour but it was very yummy. It was crispy, very nicely chewy on the inside and I loved the texture inside that was created by the sourdough. Most rewarding even if I actually failed to make Naan. Next time I will remember the yoghurt.

I just came out of a crazy 3 week project that was made up of 14-16 hour days. I am not as young as I used to be - what a shocker. So explains the lack of blogging and the effort to press the button on my camera that takes the photo the past weeks. So it's like this, work work work 6 days of 14 hours - rest Sunday. And all I can think of - besides sleeping is baking bread! It's like I needed to do something else and I needed to bake bread. Specifically healthy 3 Seeded bread rolls. All of my favourite seeds: Flax, Sunflower and Poppy. This is so healthy and good for you because of the rich amounts of Omega 3 oils from the Flax, the vitamins and minerals from the Wheat germ, and it's so flavourful! This week's version is a slight variation because I ran out of whole wheat flour - and of course you make a white bread version.

I just found out from Wikipedia why Poppy seeds can't be found here in Singapore. Although it's really very harmless, the drug opium is produced by "milking" latex from the unripe fruits ("seed pods") rather than from the seeds, all parts of the plant can contain or carry the opium alkaloids, especially morphine and codeine. This means that eating foods (e.g., muffins) that contain poppy seeds can result in a false positive for opiates in a drug test. And so the sale of poppy seeds from Papaver somniferum is banned in here due to the morphine content. And if you've had poppy seeds you know you don't feel like you can fall asleep forever and ever.

I've also since discovered the wonderful joy of adding Milk powder instead of Milk to breads - they are much better conditioners! This recipe was one that I found on Allrecipes.com but have since made some variations to it.

I wonder if I will get arrested for eating poppy seeds bread rolls...?

Christmas Carbs... *Evil!* What is it about them that give so so much comfort? Something seemingly so innocent and inviting. Their pretty colours and pretty packaging are all a setup - that works! And all you want to do is stuff your face with them. Maybe it's the season of depression too that encourages such self inflicted force feeding tendencies. Whatever! I just want more! Will do the diet thing after Chinese New Year!

Christmas breads are a lovely and wicked part of holiday weight gain. Yes, still in bread making mode and so Panettone a richly aromatic and sweet wild yeast bread of the Italians made it's way into my kitchen. When I first saw this recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice : Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart, it was one of the first to be marked to be baked.

I kneaded this by hand and it took me a long time. I became one with the dough, my hands and dough were fused as one. Kneading requires you to not only move your arms but your hips and knees and shoulders and feet to get enough energy into your hands and arms to knead the dough. It was quite a sight. But it was all worth it because I finally windowpaned! Woo!

It was well worth it because the baked bread was wonderfully soft and moist! This recipe calls for a wild-yeast starter or sourdough starter. I acquired mine from Sourdoughs International but you can make your own - this requires some days and patience.

I love Soft Pretzels or Brezel. I love their smooth golden crust with the soft chewy centers with butter drizzled over it. Yum! I would eat it everyday when I was living in Berlin some years ago. It just something I could never get tired of eating.

I'm so glad I found on The Fresh Loaf a great recipe for it. This recipe was submitted by Floydm and it is really quite simple to prepare. I hand kneaded the dough for 10 minutes and I think my upper arms are going to ache tomorrow (what a workout) but very worth the effort. I also boiled them in water and a teaspoon of baking soda for about a minute on each side before baking them in the oven. I baked for 12 minutes and at 6 minutes rotated my tray 180° so they brown evenly. All in all I took about just over 2 hours to make (I left it to proof for an hour).

If you want the authentic real deal you will need to include domestic lye as a wash. I don't even want to try it. And if you must (and if you read German) you will find a great deal of information at Der Brez'n-Bäcker.

I am thinking of adding garlic the next time as a topping.

The bagels are being cooled. I've baked them and the sense of accomplishment is rewarding. Baking breads requires a great deal of patience and good time-management skills. If anything this is the best and most fun part of the whole joy of the creation of food. The whole discovery, experimenting, failure and the triumph of creating a successful dish! I am still brimming with glee with the successful activation of my cultures and very successfully creating bagels from it.

These bagels were nicely dense and chewy also really nice when toasted! Though I think I overdid it with the coarse sea salt topping. So sprinkle with caution.

With so much sourdough cultures left... what is next?!

The starter proofed quite well. Nice and bubbly. Added the remaining ingredients all but 1 cup of flour (according to the recipe) and mixed with my trusted rubber spatula. It was a pretty wet dough and so I did a manual wet knead, working the dough as much as I could. I added the rest of the flour and it was still quite wet. So I added more, of about 1½ more in total. I transferred the dough to the counter and tried to knead it - it was tacky and I couldn't do a windowpane test (I really must work on this.). I proceeded to dividing the dough up into 18 little balls of 100gm each left it to rest on baking parchment lined cookie sheets for 20 minutes.

After letting the dough rest, I shaped them and again left them to rest for 20 minutes. Since it was getting late and I really wasn't up to baking bread at midnight. I thought I'd try the overnight retardation technique of leaving the dough overnight in the fridge to extend fermentation, giving it more flavour. I had to do a "float test" to see if the bagels were ready to be retarded. I took a bagel and dropped it in a bowl of tap water, it floated up within 10 seconds. Hooray! Got them packed, layered between lightly oiled parchment paper in plastic square containers.

Let's see how we do tomorrow!

The final part of my Big Bread Weekend of merry bread making! Let me begin by saying that a month ago when I first tried to make pizza dough I had no idea what was ahead of me, the whole science, debate, discussion and rules of a true Neapoilitan pizza.

The recipe of my first pizza dough I made was from Chubby Hubby and 101 Cookbooks - the recipe they used are taken from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. The baked pizza crust had a wonderful wonderful texture, perfect the way I love it - chewy and slightly crispy at the edges! I was quite happy.

Then my pizza making world opened up when I discovered Jeff Varasano's site and The Pizza Making Forum. Wow. To half the world, Pizza is the perfect meal. The amount of information and serious discussion over a mixture of flour, water and yeast. The way these people were describing their pizza making experiences and how things should be with their spreadsheets and baking percentages can be initially very intellectually intimidating. And I'm thinking, I just want to make pizza! Why so complicated!? It doesn't take too long though before you get caught up in the excitement and want to work at making the perfect pizza crust (with the given constraints like having a normal oven with no baking stone). You see? Ignorance is bliss. I was happy with my first, now I just want to keep making it better.

And now that I know a little more, I laugh at my old self when I actually rolled out my first pizza dough. Silly cow. Everyone knows you don't do that.

So let's be clear. This recipe is not a Vera Pizza Napoletana. It's not entirely authentic. It can't be. My home electric oven goes only to 250°C at max, I have no baking stone but I LOVE this dough! After a month of experimenting, I've arrived at this recipe. I probably still have a long way more to go, but I think this is a good basic and decent dough a pizza making noobie can make at home.

Chewy Cinnamon Scrolls is part 2 of my 3 part Big Bread Weekend. These little buttery cinnamon scrolls in pretty paper cups fresh from the oven really hits the spot. Comfort food. Warm rolled up chewiness in cinnamon and hazelnut butter, the aromatic wafts of cinnamon on a monsoon afternoon makes it all okay. And yes, monsoon has started 1 or 2 weeks ago after weeks of horrible haze from the neighbour's deforestation exercise and then suddenly one afternoon the sky decided to pour forth it's frustration and angst from the pollution. And Singaporeans, PRs and expats united together and for once warmly welcomed the screaming rain and thunder. It's always a dramatic monsoon.

This recipe is an amalgamation of the one in The Bread Baker's Apprentice : Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread and Donna Hay Magazine (Issue 8). This basically a bread recipe so, it requires some time to allow the dough to ferment. Fermentation, I have learnt is the work of 2 very important elements, Yeast and Lactobacilli (bacteria that produces lactic acid from the fermentation of carbohydrates). So in idiot terms, the yeast creates the bubbles and the lactobacilli the flavour. There are 2 ways to ferment your dough, you can either do a warm rise or a cold rise. A warm rise is leaving the dough out and wait for it to rise gradually create flavour - this can take 12-24 hours. The variation in room temperature and the amount of yeast used can make a difference in how well the dough rises and ferments. You can be lazy like me and do the cold rise - which in many ways better too. In this whole process of fermentation, the yeast only requires about 2 hours to create all the fun little bubbles - and it works better in a warm environment. This only allows the Lactobacilli only 2 hours to produce all the wonderful flavours and it works well in any temperature. So by preparing the dough the night before allows the dough a long time to develop wonderful flavours for your bread.

You need a fair bit of time to prepare and bake bread anyway so best to read up the recipe and plan your time accordingly.

"Patience is a Baking Virtue"
Peter Reinhart

How wise and true. More specifically, Bread Baking. So much time and consideration goes into baking a loaf of bread. I had finally gotten my hands on The Bread Baker's Apprentice : Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. I've read so many good reviews about it through countless blogs and websites and I so wanted to have a copy so I could be a part of this very special world of bread baking and to finally understand all the cool bread baking lingo, such as proofing, autolyse and window paning. Now, I'm in. I was giggling and smiling to myself as I paged through the book carefully, my colleagues rolled their eyes at my insanity and told me to just start baking and feed them instead of showing them all the pretty bread pictures.

This is going to be my Big Bread Weekend a three-part super carbo creating crash course in bread making with the help of The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I'm going to be covered with flour. My kitchen is going to be covered with flour. And I will hopefully develop some patience in that process. Hahahahaaaaaa!!

First, I made poolish. It's a pre-ferment of Polish origins, a mixture of flour and water mixed together and fermented to help save time and to improve flavour and structure. I made poolish primarily because I wanted to work on my pizza dough and I read that including a starter in the dough will make a big difference. This is will elaborate in a later blog entry when I make pizza (again) tomorrow. And so since I have this big pot of poolish and I only need so much for the pizza I thought I would try to make Poolish Focaccia from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. With this recipe using a pre-ferment, I need only 1 day to make it whereas the regular one without the pre-ferment takes 3 days. Being the impatient and impulsive person that I am I naturally chose the poolish version, makes sense right? Since I have a big pot of it sitting in my fridge.

You will need 6 hours to make the focaccia alone, this excludes the time for the poolish to ferment, if you include that you will need about 9-10 hours. I used a lot of the waiting time to wash and clean up.

Patience is a baking virtue.

When I was a kid - I always stuck to Chā Shāo Bāo or Red Bean Paste Bāo. To me the Big Bāo was for bigger people like adults. It's much bigger than the regular buns and i could never finish one. The Big Bāo is also a savoury bun, filled with stir fried gingered chicken, pork and chinese mushrooms in soy and oyster sauce, with a wedge of hard boiled egg. It could be a meal. The Big Bāo is also considered the King of the Bāos because it just has a whole lot more than the other 1 main ingredient Bāo. So being all grown up now, it's time to have Big Bāo.

The dough used for this Bāo is the regular kind - unlike the one for the Chā Shāo Bāo which required more time and days. This is a lot simpler and you just need to prepare it in about an hour ahead. The recipe I used is adapted from Agnes Chang's Delightful Snacks & Dim Sum. With this dough you can fill your Bāo with a variety of fillings like red bean paste, lotus seed paste, minced chicken, etc. The possibility is endless!

I haven't met anyone who doesn't like Bāo. It's cheap, it tastes great and best of all it's fills you up just right. I remember squealing as a little girl when Mum bought us Chā Shāo Bāo, the sweet barbecued pork filling oozing out from a soft and fluffy bun - always made my day. It was always Chā Shāo Bāo for me, even of there was a huge variety of different bāos with equally wonderful treasures within. It took me a few years to tear myself away from it and discovered Red Bean Paste and Lotus Seed Paste bāos... Mmmmm!!

The thing about chinese cuisine - as simple as it may appear, it usually always takes years to master it right. It's a chinese way of learning anything - practice, practice, practice (for eons) until it's drilled into your mind, body and soul. That is why my asian culinary skills are far weaker than my western abilities.

This is my first time making bāo and making bread from yeast. I obviously need a lot of practice on my bāo wrapping skills. I know it's not great or impressive, I'm still pleased at my maiden attempt. The texture of the bun wasn't as fluffy as I hoped, but that requires time for yeast to age. The filling was very tasty - I think I might add half a cup more water so it might be a little more gooier.

To make myself feel better about my first attempt, it is true that first attempts will never come close to looking like the ones you get from restaurants or Dim Sum houses. The ones that are professionally hand crafted by Bāo Shīfus (Bāo Masters) use old yeast or starter doughs that have been around for a long time. The longer the yeast is allowed to proof and age the fluffier, softer and "Smilier" the bāos get. Smiling bāos are the ones that are opened and fluffed up at the top (please do not use my attempt as a good and successful example of smiling bāos). Smiling bāos usually are used in Chā Shāo Bāos. The recipe is from Agnes Chang's Delightful Snacks & Dim Sum. I've also been researching and reading a bāo forum hosted by Jo's Deli & Bakery that has been incredibly helpful.

World Bread Day '06

This is also made specially as a contribution to World Bread Day 2006. The International Union of Bakers and Bakers-Confectioners (UIB) declared 16th of October as World Bread Day to celebrate the basic staple of life that is eaten across all cultures and tradition.

Go Carbs!