Inner Solace

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(Source: tits-ahoy, via voiceslikeyours)

Taiwan Bread (recipe)

Another Thermomix specific recipe.  Not a fan.  It’s sweet like other Asian bread, but dense.  The brown sugar used also gives it an unusual sweetness.

Also had difficulty with the rise.  Had to leave it for a couple of hours before it doubled in size for the first rise, and another couple for it to rise in the loaf pan.  And it still came out dense.

edit: It also dries out very quickly.

I’ll be sticking to my Tang Zhong bread.

Char siew pau, just out of the oven.

I used the Tangzhong technique so the bread was lovely and fluffy, though a little salty because I omitted the sugar by accident.  The filling was also just nice.  Perhaps a little hoisin sauce would have made it perfect.

The egg glaze created a little baked ring at the base of the bun which Eric says makes it authentic, just like the bakery.

In my quest for fluffy bread, Sylvia referred me to a technique called the Tangzhong or 65°C method.  Tangzhong is just a paste made by cooking bread flour and water up until it forms a paste at 65°C.  If you don’t have a thermometer, you hit that temperature around the time when stirring leaves lines in the paste.

You need about a half cup of it for a loaf but it’s meant to create that nice fluffy bread you find in Chinese/Japanese bakeries.

Using this little bread improver, I tried out this recipe Sylvia linked me and skipped the filling.  I used the breadmaker for the kneading and the first rise as they suggested, then pulled the dough out and did the divide/rest and final rise by hand.

The result was a beautifully soft and fluffy bread, just like the shops.  When you first pull the loaf out of the pan, the crust is a little chewy but once it cools, it’s that shop-soft texture that I love.

But now the question I must ask is whether I would get the same result if I baked it start to finish in the breadmaker.  I tried to calculate the timing of the breadmaker process, but I’m not sure it adds up to the same amount of rising time.

If it comes out just as dense in the breadmaker, then I’ll just have to come to terms with the fact that’s just how the breadmaker makes bread and I’ll have to finish all my bread in the oven.  If it’s soft and fluffy, then I’m ditching the breadmaker’s recipe book. :P

Got a hand-me-down breadmaker from my brother.  So I’ve been having fun making bread without the effort. ^_^

Okay, it’s not quite the same but at least I know if I have a hankering for bread, this doodad will give me some in three hours!

I’ve been trying to replicate Asian style white bread, all fluffy and slightly sweet.  When I made it by hand before, it was kinda of dense.  And using the breadmaker it’s still kind of dense. So at least I know I wasn’t entirely at fault.

A bit of research helped me work out that using actual milk contributes to the denseness. So I’ve started using milk powder[1] and jacking up the sugar to get the sweetness I like.  Not using fresh milk is helping to make the bread a bit lighter, but it’s still not quite fluffy.

I suspect this is because I need to do this the old-fashioned way and let it rise a bit longer…

[1] The downside of buying milk powder is that I’m drinking more milk made from milk powder. It’s so damn tasty. But I’m sure it’s not very good for me…

Ham chim peng is an evil tasty Asian bread that’s usually deep-fried for optimal greasy deliciousness factor (like most Asian snackage).

I’m too lazy to deep-fry so I thought I’d try a baked only variant, and I had no idea how to go about making it so I used a basic sweet bread recipe and put five spice in it.

I know, this is probably such a half-arsed way of making it and I’ll look up real recipes for it tomorrow. But I made a bread product with yeast and let it rise and stuff so that’s an achievement in itself.

A few notes:

The bread mix was quite nice on its own, but for this snack it wasn’t quite salty enough so I might add a bit of salt to the dough next time.  It could also probably have done with a leetle bit more filling.

It’s also the first time I’ve added extra gluten to flour for baking, but it really did give the dough a bit more spring.  For breads, the ratio is meant to be 1 tablespoon of gluten flour for every 1 cup of plain flour.  This works really well, IMO.

For the rises, I usually have issues getting a nice bread rising climate. I was told to try heating the oven to low, switching it off (or alternatively, leaving it on) and putting the dough in. But that didn’t work for me.

I heard somewhere else that if you put a tray of boiling water at the bottom of the oven, and put the bowl of dough (uncovered) on the rack just above and keep the door closed, it’ll keep the oven warm enough to help the dough rise and the humidity will stop it from drying out.  That worked an absolute treat.

Anyway, on with the recipe.

Ham Chim Peng

Ingredients:

• 450g plain flour
• 50g gluten flour
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 7 Tbs sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup warm water
• 40g soft butter

Filling:

• 3 tsp five spice powder
• 1.5 tsp salt
• sesame seeds (usually white, I only have black)

Method:

Combine dry ingredients in a mixer bowl.  Combine the egg and the warm water in a separate bowl.  Add to the wet to the dry ingredients.

Using the dough hook attachment, mix until the dough comes together.  Then knead the butter into the dough.

Allow to rise until double (about 40 min - 1 hr) then punch down and knead for a couple more minutes.

Roll roughly into a long rectangle.

Combine the filling ingredients and sprinkle evenly over the dough.

Roll the dough up into a long scroll and slice into approximately inch wide pieces.

Flatten with the palm of your hand and top with more sesame seeds if desired.

Place onto a lined baking sheet and allow to rise again for about 20-30 minutes before baking at 180C for 15 minutes.

Inspired by Anavrin, I decided to make some of my own cinnamon rolls tonight!

I found a recipe for Fastest Cinnamon Buns which doesn’t need yeast (it’s late :P) and adapted it slightly for what I had in the pantry.

While the photo looks washed out (I need better light in the kitchen for cooking/baking adventures at night…) the rolls were nice and golden, albeit rather ugly.  Although being yeast free, the texture is more what I imagine an American style ‘biscuits’ would be like, rather than your conventional cinnamon roll. Still, tasty. But I think I’ll stick to a normal bread dough recipe in future.

Quick Cinnamon Rolls (very slightly adapted from Fastest Cinnamon Buns)

• 2/3 cup crème fraîche
• 1/3 cup milk
• 50g melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2.5 cups plain flour (give or take)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1/4 teaspoon bi-carb

Filling

• a small knob of butter
• 2/3 cup raw sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• 1/4 cup sliced almonds

Pre-heat oven to 200C, grease a 9” pan.

Process the wet ingredients for the dough, add the dry and pulse/burst process until combined.  The dough will be quite wet.

Scrape dough onto a floured surface and knead smooth. Since the crème fraîche makes the dough so wet, you might have to add more flour until the dough just barely sticks to the surface.

Roll the dough into a rectangle. The recipe says 12x15” but I didn’t really check. As long as you can roll it once the filling is added, I guess.

Mix the ingredients for the filling and spread onto the dough.  Sprinkle more almonds on top if you want.  Lightly press them into the surface.

Roll the dough up, slice and place cut side up in the pan.

Bake for about 30 minutes.

Hokkaido Milk Bread (which also contains cream). It rose reasonably well but not as much as I expected. <3 sweetened breads.

Om bread nom nom nom.

The red rice is an intriguing bread flavour.  But overall tasty.

Go my little yeast minions! Fly! … I mean… Rise!

Yeah, trying to make bread again.  Today it’s green tea and red rice (via Apple Pie, Patis, and Pâté)