So last year, I tried making Sprouted Wheat Bread with whole wheat flour and it turned out like this: [[image:bread125.jpg:Sprouted Wheat Bread, 1st Try:center:0]] Remember this bread? The one that required me to be part gardener, part baker. I thought the first time that I made it, that the whole wheat flour hid the wheat berries and the sprouts. So I tried the bread again, this time with white whole wheat flour. We begin with the ingredients: [[image:bread177.jpg:Wheat Berries, cheesecloth, jar:center:0]] So here we go with the gardening. Place a cup of the wheat berries in the jar, rinse with warm water and tie the cheesecloth over the top of the jar. This time I learned from before, and laid the jar on the side for optimal wheat berry sproutage. For the next three days, Vin had to remind me to water the berries twice a day. They were kept […]

Let’s take a short break from the vacation for some bread. These are breads that I baked the final 4 months of last year. I know, I should have really written this entry a long time ago. But here goes. This first bread is called Onion Caraway Bread. My second try at this bread. [[image:bread194.jpg:Onion Caraway dough:center:0]] Let it rise: [[image:bread195.jpg:Onion Caraway, risen:center:0]] Then bake: [[image:bread196.jpg:Onion Caraway Bread, baked:center:0]] It was a nice, oniony bread, with not too strong a caraway taste (I’m not too fond of caraway seeds, to be honest). Next we turn to the brioche again. I first tried brioche earlier in the year, and using the same basic brioche dough, I made a couple other variations on the bread. The first is called Raisin Brioche: After the dough has been kneaded, but before being rested in the fridge overnight, divide into 2 parts. Add raisins to […]

For some reason today I’m a bit rajin to write and publish entries on the blog. Must be the prospect of the 3-day weekend coming up! Woohoooo! I’m a bit backlogged, but here’s a quick review of Shepherd’s Pie which I made earlier this year. First, cook the beef and tomato mixture on the stovetop (with peas, and other veggies too). Make sure you cook it in an oven-safe pan. [[image:sh-pie1.jpg:Meat mixture bubbling on the stovetop:center:0]] Make some mashed potato (this I made from scratch), spread it over the meat mixture, and pop it in the oven until the potatoes are crusty and a bit golden brown: [[image:sh-pie2.jpg:Baked shepherd’s pie:center:0]] Then you can section it off and serve: [[image:sh-pie3.jpg:Pretty slice:center:0]] It’s not really too pretty because the slice didn’t stay together too nicely when I lifted it off the pan. Seen here, it’s served with Buttermilk Bread (which I’ll get […]

I really have been remiss in posting my bread experiments from last year! So to continue the story, I take up where I left off: the next bread I baked in April. I tackled a complicated bread and took so many different pictures that I figure it rates its own entry. 😀 I have been baking pretty steadily, and really getting into bread baking. It’s still something I enjoy doing, and the process is getting quite familiar and comforting. It’s still an adventure to see whether the bread will rise or not, or if it will have the texture I want. In fact, I’ve even branched out to combining a bit of gardening with baking bread. This bread is called Sprouted Wheat Bread. It’s a whole wheat flour dough that is enhanced by adding sprouted wheat berries into the mix. You start off 3 days prior to baking day, growing […]

I don’t know what it is about Ramadan, but fasting makes me think about food. My last entry was about bread. What goes well with bread? Soups, of course! Toast up a little bread and dip it in hot soup, like little croutons. Mm mmm. Some soups even begin with stale leftover bread. Like this Gazpacho Andaluz. [[image:soup10.jpg:Gazpacho Andaluz:center:0]] I’ve had Gazpacho before, but usually it’s chopped tomatoes and other veggies in it (sort of like a mediterranean bubur ca ca without the bubur). But when we were in Jaen, at Alfonso’s El Bar Dalas, I had my first taste of the Andalucian Gazpacho. It’s a smoothly pureed raw vegetable soup, and if served as a tapa, it was served in a chilled wineglass. It was smooth going down and even though I hate tomatoes, I loved this gazpacho. I wasted no time in finding a recipe for it when […]

I thought and thought and thought about my new hobby – bread baking, and I wanted to write a long paean to it. But now the days keep passing me by and my workload has not lessened. The summer is zooming by and I’m sure Hisham thinks I’ve totally forgotten that he’d done all this work to get my pictures formatted for the blog. Well, rather than research bread and write a history of bread, this will mostly be a photojournal of my new obsession. For my birthday this year, Vin bought me a KitchenAid artisan 6 quart stand mixer: [[image:bread01.jpg:Toy! My Toy!:center:0]] It was exactly what I wanted, given that I’d been dropping hints and marking my Kitchen.com catalogs for months before my birthday. Vin finally just sat down, pointed it out and discussed with me what size, what features, what color, etc. I wanted. So I got exactly […]