Updates for the past week...
I had 2 not very successful bakes, so not in the mood to post them up. I tried baking the Milk Loaf again using the borrowed bread machine, adding some green tea powder to it after I saw this Green Tea Milk Loaf. However, the bread didn't turned out to be good. The centre of the bread seemed to be a bit moist. No idea why it was like that. Didn't taste that good either so I didn't take any photos too.
Then I tried making the Thin-crust vegetarian pizza from Happy Homebaker. But again, it was not good. First of all, the crust wasn't thin at all. It was actually quite thick and hard to bite in. I had used the bread machine and set it to "Dough" function to knead the dough. Then I also overbaked the pizza and the cheese on top was burnt.
The good thing about this week is, I have just bought the Bluesky bread machine from Carrefour at the promotional price of $69.90.
Then, I happened to borrow a new book from the library called "Bread: The definitive guide to making bread by hand or machine". It has a basic guide of using the bread machine and the recipes show procedures of making breads both by hand or in a machine.
To try my new machine, I bake the simplest bread in that book, the Farmhouse White Loaf. It doesn't include any milk or egg so I thought it would be nice to try. If it turns out good, then I can prepare the ingredients at night and use the delay timer function to get freshly baked bread in the next morning.
No bread improver is used and this bread still taste quite soft and fluffy, except that the crust is quite thick. No idea how it will turn the next day as it was finished up in the same day (my father eats bread 3 times a day, haha!). It is best eaten toasted or spread with jams as it is just a pure plain bread.
Farmhouse White Loaf
(Recipe from Bread: The definitive guide to making bread by hand or machine)
Ingredients (500g loaf)
300g bread flour
1 tbsp butter (about 14g)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
175ml water
2 tsp milk powder (optional, for richer and golden crust) (I forget to add)
Method
1. Lift the tin out of the bread machine, fit the kneader blade then add the measured cold water and butter. Spoon in the flour then add the sugar and salt (make sure the flour covers the liquid completely and add sugar and salt in different corners of the tin). Make a slight dip in the centre of the flour and sprinkle in the yeast.
2. Insert the tin into the bread machine. Shut the lid and set to basic white bread, select size of loaf, and medium crust (I choose light crust). Press start.
3. At the end of the programme, lift the tin out of the machine. Loosen the bread with a plastic spatula then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
For 750g/1kg loaf, or making by hand, refer to the book. Lazy to type all. :)
That's all for the long post!
