Drops of joy: bread

Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts

Monday, 29 December 2008

Give us today our daily bread

I loooove the smell of freshly baked bread! Home-baked bread disappears faster than one can spell b-r...Continuing all the wonderful times of my baking classes, decided to make a cannelloni (which by the way my help at home has learnt to perrfection!) with garlic and cheese bread was made for dinner.

The yeast is still at home in abundance, so much so that naans (also perfected by my help!) are now becoming part of daily fare!

To add a bit on break-making, important to follow. The process of letting the dough rise is known as proving. During the whole proving of the dough the yeast are multiplying, feeding on the sugar that is present. Carbon dioxide is produced, and this fills up the tiny gas pockets generated during the kneading of the dough

Once the dough has doubled in size it is important to knock the dough, this is similar to kneading. The dough is punched after which it is kneaded gently for a short time. The aim is to remove any air pockets which have might formed in the dough, create an even texture in the bread and redistribute the yeast, allowing fermentation to continue. The dough can then be proved a second time.

Here's the recipe!

Ingredients:
Flour - 250 gms
Yeast - 15 gms (1 tbsp - fresh yeast)
Warm milk - 50 ml
Sugar - 10 gms (2 tsp)
Butter - 15 gms
Salt - 5 gms
Water - as required
Cheese - 75 gms (8-0)
Garlic - 10 flakes

Method:

Disperse yeast along with sugar in a little warm milk and keep aside for 2-3 mins

Sieve flour into a marble top (preferably) and make a well in the centre

Pour yeast mixture , add water as required to make a soft dough (do not knead)

Mix butter and salt and ix it into the the a smooth dough

Cover the dough with a wet cloth (e.g. muslin) and leave till it rises to almost double in size ('proving')

Take the dough and knead it on the marlble top again - add in chopped garlic and half the cheese

Shape into loaf and place on well greased baking tray and prove again till it doubles in size

Once done brush with egg wash (I use a milk walk which is 50 ml with 1 tsbp of sugar)

Sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake in oven at 200 degrees celcius

When done sprinkle with melted butter!

The cheese and garlic can be replaced with almost any filling you wish, mushrooms, olives, herbs, paneer etc.

All ready to be served for dinner!

Monday, 8 December 2008

Bagel Shop - Part II

I've been itching to make bagels ever since a visit to the Bagel shop. Multiple attempts to make bread with the dry yeast one gets in shops were met with complete failure. Until I attended these baking classes ,where not only did I find lots of confidence, but a whole lot of fresh yeast, to be precise half a kilo! So there's been whole wheat bread, garlic and cheese bread, bread rolls etc. etc. And then I thought, why not bagels!

Anyways, without getting into the intricacies of the ingredients (which I'll probably describe in another blog) the process of making the bagel was a whole lot of fun. Like described earlier, bagels are cooked in boiling water before baking. I read up a whole lot of recipes, taking bits from here and there. Some recipes spoke about using caramelised water for boiling the bagels - I thought it better to cut out the sugar and added a a bit of baking powder instead in attempt to make the bagels fluffy. Some others mentioned proving the dough overnight, which is what I did - it made the bagels chewier.

The end result

Chomp! Chomp! Chomp! The bagels were just yummy.

This what they looked like, fresh from the oven, had one for breakfast.

On a chocolatey note, went for a chocolate making class this weekend!! The class was just lovely, found it hard to believe some of the stuff, just look! We even got our own individual decorative bags, which we filled with the chocolate we made to take back home!