BAKING PROJECT

Archive for the ‘Bread’

Homemade pretzels

June 25, 2010 By: Yasmin Category: Bread, Other baked stuff 6 Comments →

I was feeling a little bit adventurous this morning and decided to try my hand at baking pretzels.. Well, the weather didn’t turn out right, it was raining all day and my dough did not seem to double its size. Nevertheless, I persevere and in the end manage to complete the pretzels..

PICT0174 I am a bit ‘shy-shy cat’ to show the picture of the pretzel here.. yes, you may laugh. Its ugly, I know ! The above pretzel had no fancy glaze on, just melted butter and honey. Anyway, here is the recipe, adapted from the book “Bake” by Rachel Allen.

Ingredients :

600 gm bread flour

1 teaspoon yeast

2 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

375 ml warm water

For the bicarb solution – 75gm sodium bicarbonate and 1 liter water.

Add the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in your mixer bowl fitted with a dough hook. Mix together oil and water. Add the liquid to the flour mixture and knead for about 10 minutes. Rub the dough with some oil, cover and leave to rise for about 1 to 3 hours. After the dough has risen to double its size, punch it down and cut into smaller balls, the same weight. Roughly about 85 to 100 gm each.

Then you can shape it. Now this is the most difficult part for me.. coz there are so many shapes, I don’t know which is the original one ? I’m hoping the one I’m going to show you is correct.

First, roll the ball into a thin rope, then make a twist.

Continue with another twist.

Now watch my sleight of hands.. Grip the ring and bring to the front.

Dab some water to glue the end of the rope to the ring.

Arrange all the pretzels on a parchment paper and let it rise again for another 10 to 2o minutes.

The next step is the bicarb bath. Bring the water to boil and dissolve the baking soda. It will bubble like mad, don’t worry, just keep on stirring. Let it simmer. Use your hand to transfer the pretzel into the water. 30 seconds on each side. I find this process can really ruin the shape of your pretzel, so you have to be careful not to stretch the pretzels when you are handling them.

Return to the tray and bake at 215C for 15 minutes. Before baking, you can sprinkles seeds like sesame or poppy seeds if you want to. Glaze the pretzels while they are still hot from the oven.

The outcome – I think the pretzels taste just like bread, as you can see the ingredients are very simple and nothing rich. But there is that unique taste as a result of the bicarb bath (which you cannot skip !) For me, I would definitely need glaze, maybe chocolate, to go with the pretzels. Just like donuts, I don’t like it plain. After making pretzel, I’m having second thoughts about making bagels.. maybe the best solution is to buy these things, no matter how pricey they are. But don’t let me set you back, we have to try, right ? And anyway, nothing beats homemade.

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Bread making & Mexican bun

June 22, 2009 By: Yasmin Category: Bread 5 Comments →

My first wholemeal Graham Bread (too healthy for me !)

The idea of baking bread from scratch always sounds daunting to me (even though my ultimate wish is to be one of those who bakes bread everyday to feed their family). I have attended classes for making bread before, but I guess if we don’t practice then the technique is soon forgotten. Armed with a renewed hope, I enrolled myself in a bread making class at Pastrypro (www.pastrypro.com.my) last Friday. What I’ve discovered is, bread making is not that difficult after all. With all the latest ingredients and technique, all you need is patience.

We learn to bake 3 types of bread – French baguette, Graham Bread and the all-purpose Soft bun. Basically the steps involve in baking bread is :

Measuring the ingredients
Mixing
Fermentation (1st rise)
Scaling & rouding
Intermediate proofing (2nd rise)
Glazing & slashing the loaf
Final proofing (3rd rise)
Baking

For further details on baking bread, hop over to http://breadbaking.about.com/.

I’m giving away the recipe that we used in class for the basic Soft Bun. It’s one of the rich dough type, with high proportion of fat, sugar and eggs. This recipe is very handy, as you can make all sorts of things out of the soft bun. We made Mexican bun, buns with tuna filling and also using hot dogs.

One of the brand used in class is called IREKS, which is being sold at Pastrypro. The recipe below and many other bread recipes, can be found in IREKS website.

SOFT BUN

High protein flour – 500 gm

IREKS soft plus – 5 gm

IREKS wheat sour – 10gm

Instant dry yeast – 15gm

Milk powder – 15 gm

Salt – 10 gm

Sugar – 125 gm

Eggs – 75gm

Water (cold) – 210 to 225 gm

Butter (add after half of the mixing time) – 15 gm

Shortening (add after half of the mixing time) -15 gm

Method :

Mix all ingredients on medium speed using the dough hook, about 8 minutes. No bulk fermentation or first rise is needed, straight away scale into the sizes you want. Round it and let is rest for 15 minutes. Then you can shape it or add any fillings you want. Final proof for 35 minutes. Bake at 180C for around 12 to 15 minutes. Enjoy the sweet aroma in your kitchen and in no time, your buns are ready !