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.

 

Happy 143th Birthday Canada!

To kick start my 4 day long weekend, I made simple pancakes for breakfast with fresh strawberry balsamic sauce. A red and white breakfast to kick start the celebration!

Strawberry Balsamic Sauce
The list of ingredients are for rough reference only. Don't forget to taste, taste, taste and adjust the amount to your liking.

Ingredients:
2 cups of strawberries, hulled and diced
1 to 2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp of balsamic glaze/reduction

Method:
On medium heat cook strawberries and sugar in a saucepan for about 5 minutes until berries become bruised and juice releases. Lower the heat and simmer for another 10 minutes or until the juice reduces to a syrupy consistency. Stir occasionally to avoid burning at the bottom. Add balsamic glaze and stir. Serve with pancakes or waffles with a dollop of whipped cream.

Breakfast anyone?

Ever since I started my baking class, especially the breakfast bread class, I have never found myself in short of breakfast. I usually stock up a week of breakfast supplies, a.k.a. my classwork, in the freezer and feed myself off for the week. As class ended and the next course won't start until mid July, I need to make breakfast once again. Yes, the question of "what to bake for breakfast" came first to "what to buy for breakfast". I think I have forgotten that grocery stores and local bakeries have breads and all kinds of other stuff to turn into breakfast.

I am never a bread person prior to taking the bread course, partly because most of the store bought breads are too fluffy and have too much additives that it feels like you haven't eaten anything. Making my own from scratch makes me realized that bread can taste so good, even without butter or condiments.

It was kind of late after dinner tonight to start making a batch of bread, so I decided to make some muffins. I found this recipe online randomly on Tastespotting, and after checking I have all the ingredients at home I have decided to give it a try.

By the way, Mr. Photographer won the GTA amateur golf tourney today and thus he named the cupcakes "Victory Cupcakes".

Strawberry Shortcake Muffins
from Seasons & Suppers
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter, cold and cut into cubes
1 egg
1 cup heavy cream (35%), Half and Half (10%) or Whole Milk (3.5%)
1 tsp. vanilla
1 - 1 1/2 cups diced strawberries (they don't have to be too small)
Icing (Confectioners) sugar, for dusting (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
   Grease or line12 muffin cups with paper liners. (or 8 gigantic ones that I made in the pictures)
2. In large bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and sugar. Cut in cold butter with a pastry blender (or two knives) until it is in small pea-size pieces. (I rubbed it in with my fingertips to resemble coarse breadcrumbs.)
3. In small bowl mix the egg, vanilla and cream. Add all at once to flour mixture. Stir with spoon until just blended. Gently mix in the diced strawberries.
4. Spoon into muffin cups, making sure each muffin has some strawberries and bake for about 25 minutes. Cool completely in pan before removing. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar once cooled.

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.

Yoshi!

You might not know, but I am a fan of mario games.  Don't get me wrong though, I am terrible gamer.  I did best in killing the Italian plumber.  Opps.

To celebrate the upcoming launch of Super Mario Galaxy 2, I have made these cute little yoshi brioche to eat while I play the game. (Although I am not sure if there will be any left by the time I get my hands on the game.) Oh yes, I made Yoshi and not Mario, as it is just that much cuter!

Can anyone answer me why both Yoshi, Mario and Luigi have huge nose?

I can't wait to start playing this game!

Bread Exploration

Last week in Breakfast Bread class we made chelsea buns. I personally don't like raisins and not much about cinnamon, I barely touched them.  Good that my brother is a big fan of raisins and he helped finished the buns for me.

I barely had a taste of it from the teacher's batch. The texture is good, I just don't like the raisins.  However since I don'tlike raisins I skimmed in the process and it turned out not having enough.

I have decided to twist the recipes to make something I like, or I think I will like.

There is an asian bakery at First Markham Place who make these gorgeous shredded pork buns. Asian (Singapore?) dried shredded pork strands are rolled into fluffy Japanese dough. Maybe I can try using the chelsea bun dough and create a savory version of it.

So here it is, my version of shredded pork bun with seaweed and dried shredded --- fish. Yeah, I asked grandma to give me a bit of her shredded pork to test my recipe and I didn't realize she gave me shredded fish. It's more powdery but it's actually better to use for this recipe as the flavour combines better I can imagine. 

How did the buns turned out? Hmm, still need a lot of improvements.  I could have used bread flour instead of all-purpose.  It's more of a test to see how strong all purpose flour is in Canada.  I came across the Chowhound forum noting that Canadian flour has in general  higher protein than US flour. Skeptical about the argument I switched the bread flour in this recipe for all-purpose.  I think I still will prefer using bread flour instead of all-purpose, as these buns turn out a little bit cakey. I have also tested the cake yeast/dry yeast conversion method from baking 911. It suggested the formula of [(cake yeast) * 0.32 = (dry yeast)]. It turns out pretty good. I will continue to use this for my bread class recipes as they always provide cake yeast.

I will refine the recipe and try it out again.  Regardless of the flaws from the test the buns still taste great, just a bit too crunchy on the outside. Hope I can get the recipe right soon!

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.