reached an impasse in bread baking so have to try new ground

i have reached an impasse in my bread baking. been baking for about a year now but have stopped experimenting with new stuffs. been using the same basic recipe over and over again.


so need to try new stuffs.

it so happened that i bought 2 books on bread baking recently during the book fair organized by popular about a week ago. kuala lumpur bookworms have been having one hell of a time as there have been so many book fairs etc. i have acquired more than ten books in the past few months and have had hell of a journey devouring them!

one of the bread book i bought and just finished reading is richard bertinent's crust.

this book was sold at half price (hardcover!). it comes with a dvd too as no amount of text written could describe better the techniques used by mr bertinent than watching him in action.


and so, i tried one of the recipes in his book.


baked the ciabatta...

of course, this is all done with white flour, not my favourite at all, as i'm for wholemeal bread.

followed the recipe to a tee, as i wanted to see how it would turn out in the end.

mr bertinent recommends to weigh all ingredients (even water) rather than use spoons or cups as this is far more accurate. but he also acknowledged that some adjustments have to be made to cater for your local environment, say it's a hot sunny day or a cool rainy day etc.

now this ciabatta consists of 2 parts, a biga and then the real thing. this biga is unlike previous biga i did before, as it's a lot drier and consists more than 1/3 of the flour.

instead of the usual kneading, mr bertinent recommends the "stretch and fold" technique. it's quite interesting but could be very very messy as we are dealing with a very wet dough here. i do agree him that wet doughs still turn out better bread than dry doughs even dry doughs are easier to handle/knead.

needless to say, i made a mess on my kitchen top. got wet gooey dough all over the place!

the other difference in technique is that mr bertinent prefers to preheat the loaf pan to 250c and sprays mists of water into the oven to create steam. something which i never tried before! he suggests to preheat the oven to 250c, then once you place the dough in, let it bake for 5 minutes, then turn down the temperature to 220c for an additional 20 minutes.

compare to my tried and tested 180c over 40 minutes, this is interesting!

well... after all the work... i can say the result is worthwhile!

 

please forgive the pics. took with my phone as can't resist taking a bite! 

look at the holes! look at the beautiful holes!

look at the crust! look at the beautiful crust!

even wifey agrees this is a wonderful bread. smells lovely and the crust is just heavenly...

my only complaint is that white bread absolutely sucks! so will be trying the same recipe but with wholemeal bread this weekend.

stay tuned...

sungai pelek dragon fruit farm

brother yh told me about this place, so i just got to check it out!

sungai pelek is a cowboy town just a 10 minute drive from sepang. yh spilled the beans about the goodies of this little small town.

of which, the favourite has to be this dragon fruit farm!



this is how the fruit is planted. this is quite a large farm...

anyway, we went there mainly for the dragon fruit enzyme. the prices we get in kuala lumpur is couple times higher than buying directly from the farm.

other than dragon fruit enzyme, there's papaya enzyme, pineapple enzyme and aloe very enzyme too.

best seller and best tasting is of course, the dragon fruit enzyme.




curiously, they managed to grow grapes too!

some "malaysian" variety. quite tiny and quite sourish i was told.

this farm is very interesting as other than dragon fruit (and grapes!), they managed to grow passion fruit as well.

oh, did i mention their pineapples are the best pineapple i have ever tasted?









bountiful of dragon fruit!

these are quite large and go for rm10 for 3.







so far we have been to this farm twice and all i can say is the trip is definitely worthwhile.

the folks at the farm are very friendly. these are nice decent hardworking folks who toil the earth and harvest such beautiful produce from mother earth.

unlike bankers... or engineers... ha ha!

perhaps one day i'll grow my own fruits too!

my gratitude towards yh for recommending me this place!

why does my bread crust turn out so tough?

a friend tried baking bread recently and found that the crust of her bread always come out a bit too chewy. it's like biting leather!

i then realized she was using a regular pan like those you use for baking cakes.

well, if you desire a softer top crust, apparently you need to give it some "moisture" during the first few instances of baking. err, not quite like this...

what you want to ensure is when the bread initially starts baking, you want to have some moisture in the oven. i guess this way come at the end of baking time, the top won't lose too much moisture.

some folks put a pan of hot water to create steam during baking. not only is this arduous, i'm not quite sure i want to handle hot water when i'm opening the oven door.

a better solution will be to use something like a "dutch oven" where you bake the bread inside a covered pot, then remove the lid almost at the end of baking time.

better still and the one i uses all the time, is to use a lidded bread loaf pan like the above. keep the lid on for more than 2/3 of baking time and remove the lid at the remainder 1/3 of baking time.

as i usually bake at 180c for 45-minutes, i usually have the lid on and place the dough + pan into the oven for 30-35 minutes, then remove the lid for the remainder 10 minutes.

through this, i found out that if i desire a chewier crust, take out the lid earlier.
if i want an even softer crust, leave the lid on longer.

quite easy eh?

movies i'll watch again and again 2

the first time i watched "legend of 1900" was more than 10 years ago but when i chanced upon the dvd in a shop nearby, i just had to revisit it!

10 years later, i'm still enthralled by the story of "the world's greatest pianist". click on the pic to read more about the story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_1900

most memorable are the few scenes of "movie magic" to me. the almost surreal "piano playing while dancing with the ocean" and the "piano duel". i assure you, if i were to write more on this, i'll be spoiling the movie for you!

i also later realized that the director of this movie, mr giuseppe tornatore, also directed another favourite of mine --- "cinema paradiso".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Paradiso

this is basically a love story, but with a lot more depth than all that angsty, petty, "love at first sight" that seems to be the favourite of most love stories out there. pathetic!

the most poignant thing about this story is near the ending when the protagonist realizes the source for his greatest love in life is also the source for his greatest sorrow in life.

do yourself a favour. borrow, beg or steal. watch these great movies!

ps: oh yeah! mr tornatore also directed another movie which i enjoyed very much - malena. starring the muse to my best selling digital analog convertor!

just discovered this make of organic flour

i haven't been to juslife for a while so i was pleasantly surprised to see they have an addition to their product line now. it's this range of organic flour from this turkish company, karahan.

the website's here http://www.karahanun.com.tr/ though i'll say i wished they did a better job on the website!











i haven't used the flours yet but the price is good. there are a few varieties of wheat flour but too bad no rye etc. maybe juslife should just bring the rest of the product range here!

oh yeah! the price. it's rm7.90 for a 1kg pack. but if you are a member, you get 10% off each purchase. membership fee is rm20 a year so if you bake quite frequently, it makes perfect sense!
same price for wheat flour, whole wheat flour and "luxury wheat flour".

i have no idea what's the "luxury part" of the last item but for bread baking, it's easy. just go for the higher protein count variety. usually these are expressed in terms of percentage and anything above 11% is good. some of the flours labeled high protein could go as high as 14%. i think i've seen 15% before but don't trust me on this. i'm not good with numbers!

ok! will report more later...