Fallen in Love

These baguettes are easy to make and the ingredients are pretty standard in any pantry. Try it, and you will fall in love with them, especially when your whole kitchen smells like fresh baked bread. You can find the recipe here. See below on my variation from the original recipe. I haven't perfected it yet as there is room for improvement, but it's a good start I think?

Things that I have done differently from the posted recipe:
1. I have replaced half cup of bread flour with all purpose flour. I read from a forum (which I lost the link!) that the best recipe uses all purpose flour for baguette. I was skeptical, so this time I replaced only a small about. The amount was probably too small to recognize though.

2. I have learned so much from Ciril Hitz's youtube video about how to form baguettes.  Hint: if you don't have a special knife that was shown in the video to score the dough "ears", I found a serrated knife works better than a straight edge paring knife.

3. I did not brush the dough with egg whites. I like my baguette to have a dull finish. Egg white gloss is too glossy, while not adding too much crunch to the crust.

4. I took out the pan of water 5 minutes before the scheduled finish baking time. The crust is thicker and stayed crunchy longer.

5. I tried both using a silicon pad and a bare baking tray with cornmeal to prevent from sticking. The baguettes looked different. Can you tell from the above photo which one was from silpad and which two were from cornmeal?

Ah, Fall!

It's getting colder and colder these days ever since I got back from my vacation. (meanwhile LA, where I spent 3 days 2 weeks ago, measures to 110 degrees F.) Apples are on sale now in the markets, which can only mean that fall is rolling in!

Last fall, I took my grandma to the farm to pick her own apples and she loved it! She said she wanted to pick apples every year. I was thinking about it the past weekend but C said it was too cold to run around in the field last Sunday and that I should do it the week after. (Noted on Wednesday: Sunday's forecast is 3 to 10 C, that's worse than last Sunday!)

Thinking about the season too much probably, I have been thinking about apple pies the entire Saturday that I just have to get some apples and start baking. I ended up making apple brioches instead of apple pies, just because I need breakfast the next day and pie is too difficult to eat in the office.

Apple Brioche
Makes 8

Filling
Ingredients
2 small apples
1 tablespoon butterscotch sauce
1 teaspoon lemon juice
rind of 1/2 lemon
a pinch of cinnamon, to taste
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Method
Peel apples with vegetable peeler. Dice into 1/2" pieces. Mix rind, juice and butterscotch to the apples and let sit for 30 to 45 minutes. Drain and reserve the juice. Mix reserved juice with cornstarch.
In a small saucepan, heat apples in medium heat. Add cinnamon and cornstarch mixture and cook until thickens. Let cool completely.

Brioche
Ingredients
A:
64g Bread Flour
64g luke warm milk
6.4g active dry yeast
B:
150g bread flour
4g salt
20g sugar
2 yolk + 1 egg (75g)
lemon rind
a pinch of cinnamon
vanilla
80g butter, room temperature

Method
Dissolve yeast in milk and add to flour. Mix, cover and let sit for 30 minutes.
Place all ingredients of B except butter on top of mixture A and mix on low speed for 2 minutes and medium for 5 minutes.
Add soft butter gradually while the mixer is on low for 4 minutes. Rest for 20 minutes.
Divide dough into 8 equal pieces. Detach a small piece off each for the top and round up.
Take the large piece, flatten and put one eightth of the filling and wrap it up, roll into a sphere and drop it in a greased muffin tin. Make an indent at the top and stick the small ball of dough on top. Brush with egg wash.
Proof dough in muffin tin until it increases 3/4 times.
Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes. Brush with hot butter for a glossy finish.

A Beautiful Mistake

Sometimes mistakes can be beautiful.

Even though I read through the recipe twice and then double checking on the screen before I pour it in, I still read it wrong. Clearly it says ¼ cups of water. What was I thinking?

Yup, so after I pour in 1 – ¼ cup of water and 2/3 cup of milk over the yeast, and dropped in the egg in the mixture, I still didn’t realise I made a mistake. It was only when I added 2 cups of flour in the mixing bowl that I realized something wasn't right. I turned on the mixer to reveal the truth and voila, I've got a batter! Not wanting to waste the mixture I decided to add more to it. What a crazy idea! I added more flour of course, started with 1 cup, then at 1/4 cup intervals to make the dough to come together. Thinking the yeast in the recipe won't be enough for the 4 cups of flour that I used, I added 3/4 teaspoon more with 1/3 cup of warm milk. The dough was still very soft and a bit sticky, but it was ok to touch. I left it covered on the counter for 20 minutes and it doubled the size already.  This dough never reached to the stage that when you poke it with your finger it would bounce back, rather it just lied tiredly on the table.  I crossed my fingers and pray the dough will be edible at the end, rolled them into buns and put them in the oven.

The result? As said on the title of this post, beautiful. The buns were so soft and moist with tight, even air pockets throughout. The texture was a crossover of that Japanese tang zhong buns and brioche. I like it and will make it again.

Trial and Error Hot Dog Buns
My guess for the quick proof time was the low amount of salt in this recipe.

2/3 cup warm milk

1 - 1/4 cup warm water

2 egg yolks

1 egg white

2 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

4 cups bread flour

3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar

2 tsp. instant dry yeast

Mix the milk, water, sugar and yeast in the mixing bowl. Add eggs. Layer the bread flour, and salt on top and start mixing. The dough should resemble chewing gum at this point. Sprinkle more flour on the dough to get it out of the bowl to a floured surface. Lightly round up the dough with more flour and cover the dough with the mixing bowl and let proof for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and put a bowl of water in the oven. Divide the dough into 12 and round up to the desired shape. Put dough on a baking sheet on a silpat with flour. Brush the top with egg white (you have an extra egg white from the egg yolk don't you?) and let proof for another 10 to 20 minutes until it rises 3/4 of its size. Bake for 15 minutes. You should have a nice colour on the buns and the bottom should sound hollow.

Food!!!

It was a weekend about food.

After last weekend's raising the kids in the daycare, I was so sleep deprived that I had put off baking for a whole week. The stress from my daywork only make my case more serious. However, by this Saturday I was all excited to bake again.

I woke up at 7am, a mere 5 hours of sleep after a I-don't-want-to-do-anything Friday night, thinking about making some bread. I must be crazy. I made some "tang zhong" ("65 degree" is another name) buns with Singapore shredded dried pork. I rolled the dough out to a long strip about 3 inches wide, brushed them with melted butter, spooned a layer of pork on top and rolled the dough up. I waited for a second proof and put them in the oven.

I thought I was clever to make good use of time and went out to the baking store for a short run in search for some specific items, only to know that a short ride of 5 mins turned to a 15 minute drive because of construction. Not only that the store did not have what I was looking for, when I got back to my kitchen the bread was a bit overcooked. I immediately took them out of the oven and brushed more melted butter on top to try to preserve the moisture.

Not to forget the Cakes: Classic to Modern class I had with Rita in the afternoon. We made St. Honoure with puff pastry, choux pastry, vanilla pastry cream and strawberries. It was the first time I make puff pastry. I have always known that the folding process is time consuming, but it never occurred to me that the baking part requires that much attention. Half way through the baking process, the pastry has to be taken out, flip over, press down and return to the oven. And when you have 6 big discs and 8 small discs to flip while the oven door was open waiting for you, the pressure was on. I burnt my left index finger during the flip. Ah well, not too bad, not to ruin my love of cakes!

The cake looks nice, not difficult to be a crowd pleaser when shown to your guests. The texture of the puff pastry could have been better though. I need more practice.

So what else?

When I say it's a weekend about food, I don't just mean Saturday, right?

Sunday started off with our usual weekly family gathering of brunch. We then had a 3 hour break and set off to the Taste of Danforth. Besides the usual Greek souvlakis, roasted corn and baklavas, there were a few rare finds like grilled lamb chops, quails, calamari and lamb liver wrapped with intestines. Since the weather was a mixed of rain and sun and cloud, it was not as crowd as usual and it was more fun to explore the stalls freely. It was a lot of fun going out with my cousins and we had a great time together. We should go back next year.

Pine-A-Por

I had no clue why borlorbao, translated as pineapple bun, gains its name when there is absolutely no pineapple in it. I only remember when I was in elementary school my grandma will bring me to the bakery after school to pick something for afternoon snack. 9 out of 10 times I would pick borlorbao. The sweet, crumbly crust is oh so tasty.

I came across a recipe for borlor-puffs. They are puffs made of choux pastry and top with a topping similar to the "bor lor" on bor lor bao.

(I am not sure where I made a mistake but the choux pastry didn't rise. I need to remake these in the near future.)

So I asked myself, why can't pineapple bun taste like pineapple?

I googled and found this pineapple custard filling recipe online. I made a few adjustments to make it stiffer and has a stronger pineapple flavour. So here is my version:

Pineapple Custard Filling

Ingredients
1/2 cup white sugar
Slightly less than ½ all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup fresh pineapple puree
1 tablespoon butter



Combine sugar, flour and salt in a pot. Stir in egg and heat until thickens. Add pineapple and pineapple juice. Cook, stirring frequently, until mixture has thickened. Stir in butter. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Olive Man

Born in a Chinese family I think my grandma is very cool. I mean, she doesn't like rice as much as she likes bread. She likes western food, and olives too. She doesn't just like olives, she LOVES olives. Every time she goes to a bakery she will look for olive bread. Since I had a long weekend and got nothing to do I might as well try to make an olive bread for her.

I know grandma likes bread that is dense and prefer a crust. I found the recipe of Rosemary Olive Bread online. Since none of my family eats olives, I divided the dough in half so that grandma can freeze a loaf while enjoying the first. It works fine! Only next time I will put a bowl of hot water in the oven during the bake to make a crust.

Does it look like a face to you? I accidentally made Olive Man!

Rosemary Olive Bread
adapted from Baking for the Cure
3 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
3/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
1/2-1 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and coarsley chopped

Combine yeast and warm water until yeast becomes creamy, about 10 minutes. Add olive oil, salt, sugar, rosemary and olives into the yeast mixture and add flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing until dough comes away from the side of the bowl. Move dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes, until dough is smooth and elastic.
Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, turn to coat, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 205º C.
Shape dough gently into a ball. Place on a baking sheet and let rise, covered with a damp towel, for 30 minutes. Dust the bread lightly with flour, slash the top and put into the oven.
Bake for 35-45 minutes, until bottom sounds hollow when tapped.
Place on a wire rack to cool.

 

I am Loving It!

My shin is hurting.  It's painful when I walk or step on the gas paddle.  I almost couldn't control the gas when I was driving on Sunday.  This is way too much for a weekend!

After the night for grandma's birthday cake I woke up early to go to baking class. Having read the course material ahead of time, I thought the bagels that we were going to make shouldn't take longer than 2.5 hours to make, only to find out that next week's class had been canceled and we were to double the course load with the bagels. That was a long, hard core class to produce 15 bagels, 1 poppy seed and 1 marzipan coffee cake in 4.5 hours.

Regardless on the confusing recipes and trying not to mix up all those bread and cake flour that we measured on the table, all the breads turned out great! After passing most of it to my parents I still have enough bagels to survive the rest of the week.  I am falling in love with bread baking. It's very satisfying when it comes out fresh from the oven.

Brioche, Brioche

Brioche? I'd say this looks more like a turtle to me.

It was my first class of Breakfast Breads at GB.  This is a 6 week course. The classroom is linked to the basic Baking Arts classroom and while I was in Baking Arts I was hooked with the wonderful smell that came from the Breakfast Bread class. It always makes me hungry. That instantly got me hooked and signed up for this class.

A brioche is suppose to look like a little snowman with a little head on top. For some reason the little heads didn't stick on the bodies and they all rolled down on the side. a.k.a. no more little snowman but little turtle instead.  However, they tasted wonderful. The smell of the eggs, extra yolks and butter and a hint of lemon burst out the moment you put them in your mouth.  It's amazing.  Unfortunately these little guys don't have a long shelf life, you have to eat them all within 2 days the most.