Do you know that once a yeast packaging is opened, you need to refrigerate the rest? Otherwise, the yeast is considered useless. I didn’t know until yesterday. My sweet dough didn’t rise at all. Wasted so much ingredients and I threw away 3/4 bottle of Bake King yeast!

It was okay when I used it to make custard buns a month back.

Anyway, I decided to get SAF yeast which comes in 5 x 11g individual packaging today. That will at least keep it fresh longer (before the expiry date) without the need to refrigerate.

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Made cinnamon rolls today. Tasted savoury cos I have only salted butter in my fridge.

Here’s the recipe (Makes approximately 18 baked cinnamon rolls that are about 4″ each + 4 small ones at the ends)

INGREDIENTS

7 cups sifted bread flour

 

Mixture A:

11g SAF dry baker’s yeast

1 cup 45ºC warm water

2/3 cup brown sugar

 

Mixture B:

1 cup 45ºC warm milk

150g melted butter

2 tsp salt (omitted cos I am using salted butter already!)

2 eggs, slightly beaten

 

Mixture C (Filling):

130g melted butter - to spread on the dough after it has been rolled out. you could use the rest to grease your baking pan.

1 cup brown sugar – I used 1/2 cup only.

3 tbsp cinnamon powder

1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

1/2 cup raisins

 

METHOD

1. Mix (A) in a bowl. Set aside. If the yeast is active, you can see the mixture bubbles with a layer of foam.

2. Mix (B) in a big plastic mixing bowl (enough for your dough mixture to double or even triple in size! :p).

3. Add (1) to Mixture (B) to mix.

4. Add bread flour to Mixture (3), a cup at a time and mix. Dough should be slightly stiff (but sticky).

5. Knead dough on a well-floured board for 5 – 10min.

6. Placed it in the same plastic bowl and cover with a wet kitchen cloth to proof till  it doubles in volume. (If it doesn’t grow at all in an hour, you can forget about proceeding to the next step. The dough will be hard if you bake it… )

7. When doubled, punch down the dough and let it rest for 5min.

8. Divide the dough into 2 equally. Roll each dough 10 x 13″ rectangle on a plastic sheet (bigger than the dough and floured it).

9. Spread each dough with melted butter first and the rest of mixture (C).

10. Roll the dough lengthwise using the plastic sheet. Pinch the edges to seal. Cut about eleven 1-inch slices. Coat the baking tin (11″ x 11″) and pack them 3 x 3. Set aside 40 min to proof till double. If you forget to proof it, the buns will taste somewhat like Danish pastry’s texture i.e. denser.

11. Bake in the oven for 15-18min at 180ºC.

 

Some Notes:

1. This bun didn’t proof long enough and was a little too flaky and crispy when it was baked for 25min at 180ºC. Tasted like Danish Pastry.

2.This bun was proofed longer and bake for 18min at 180ºC. Tasted more like soft bread. This is preferred by those who tasted it. You can see the difference in height!

3. I cut the remaining butter into 2 usable sizes of 60g each. No need to measure again for Zopf bread!

 

Making Macarons is tougher than I’ve thought! I tried making these Sesame Macarons with red bean ganche.

Couldn’t get the shape right. sob sob… Taste wise is super sweet and a little sticky. Well… what do u expect from a macaron?

Radish cake is very simple to do. Really. For someone who only started to cook or bake daily in the last one month. Internet is your best resource to do research on the “best” recipe to try

This recipe fills a 9″ springform round baking pan.

Step 1: Fry 50g dried shrimp till crispy and grind them to powder. Cut a Chinese sausage into tiny cubes.

Step 2: Peel a 450g daikon (1 white radish) using a potato peeler and shred coarsely as shown below.

Step 2: Heat wok over high heat until a drop of water evaporates from the wok. add 3 tbsp of oil. Add shredded daikon, 1 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp pepper and 1 tsp oyster sauce to stir-fry for 3min. Cover and cook over low heat for about 15min till daikon is cooked and soft.

Step 3: Add dried shrimp powder, Chinese sausage bits, 300g rice flour, 60g wheat starch,  and 1 litre boiling water to the cooked daikon and stir till all combined.

Step 4: Scoop the batter into a 9″ springform baking pan. Press the batter so that it fills the pan nicely.

Step 5: Steam it for 30 – 45 min.

Step 6: Let it cool to set. That’s it!

Fry it with egg. It’s nice with lots of white pepper, coriander leaves and some fish sauce to taste. My mum fried this and took this picture

Had it for breakfast and lunch today!

Simple isn’t it?

(A) 65°C water-roux starter

It’s a boring rainy afternoon surfing for recipes to try till I saw Florence’s recipe – 65ºC Chocolate Wassant.

What’s that? It’s a simple method called 65°C water-roux starter which can replace bread improver / softener that makes your bread super soft (even after a day or 2 if u keep in an air-tight container) – just like Petit Provence’s (crust is crispy though)!

Ingredients (Basically, 1 part bread flour + 5 parts water)
50g bread flour
250ml water

Method (I have a microwave that can heat up to the desire temperature. For the details how others did it, read this)

1. Heat water to 50°C in a microwave in a microwave safe container.

2. Dissolve bread flour in the water. Put it back to microwave and heat to 65°C. Stir the mixture again.

3. Leave it to cool till room temperature as I work on the chocolate layer.

(B) Chocolate Layer

Ingredients
40g cake flour
100g sugar (I regret halving the original recipe. A little bitter… my advice is to add 120g cos cocoa is bitter and the dough is not sweet!)
2 egg white
160ml milk
40g cocoa powder
20g butter

Method
1. Mix cake flour, sugar and egg white till smooth.
2. Heat the milk in a saucepan and stir in the cocoa powder. (Careful about this part… I added all at one go and there were lumps that are hard to dissolve…   )
3. Add in the egg white mixture stirring till thicken and dry. (Nearly char here… must turn to low heat and stir continuously!)
4. Stir in the butter and mix till all butter is incorporated.
5. Leave to cool and measure out 300g of the chocolate paste. Put this chocolate paste into a freezer bag and roll it into a rectangular shape of size 22cm x 14cm. (My freezer bag is 20.4cm x 17.8cm… not a big issue as I realised later.)
6. Keep refrigerated for at least 2 hours before using.

(C) Dough

Ingredients
250 – 270g bread flour (I added alot more cos the dough was so sticky! Mine was 300g bread flour!)
70g cake flour
20g skim milk powder (I used my mum’s Anlene Milk Powder for 51 plus… haha…)
100g water-roux starter (see above)
5g salt
40g sugar
25g egg yolk + 115g warm water (I didn’t bother to measure this. Just use the 2 egg yolks separated)
8g dry yeast (I used all of SAF instant dry yeast which is 11g per sachet.)
26g butter (I melted this in the microwave first. Hate to cut butter into small pieces and work with them in the kneading process)

Method
1. Put all ingredients into the bread maker, select the Dough cycle and let the bread maker knead and prove the dough- which is about 100mins. (I didn’t have a bread maker. Not a concern. Use a wooden spoon to mix and knead. It worked all the time for me anyway. See how much it grew in size after 45min! More than twice! )

2. When the dough cycle is completed, remove the dough and punch out the air. Roll out the dough into a rectangle of size 31cm x 22cm. (This was a hassle to measure. Basically this dough should wrap the chocolate layer. Do use a plastic sheet as shown below because this dough is very sticky and wet to handle with your hands! See how I do it!)

3. Place the chocolate layer on the middle of the dough. Fold in both ends of the dough to cover the chocolate layer completely. Seal all the edges tightly..
4. Turn the dough 90°. Roll dough till it is about 60cm x 22cm. (If you didn’t flour the surface, this is very difficult to do!)
5. Fold the dough into 4 folds. Turn dough 90C. Roll dough into a 54cm x 22cm rectangular sheet. (I didn’t follow the dimensions…)

A palette knife was used to cut these triangles.

6. Cut into triangular pieces of base 9cm and height 22cm. Roll triangular pieces from the widest part. (Personally, I felt the dimensions given was too big for a chocolate wassant. From one triangle of the original dimension, I managed to do 3 chocolate wassants instead. See picture.)

7. Prove* for 50 minutes at 35°C. (*Cover these with a wet clean cloth.)

8. Apply egg wash and bake at 175C -180C for 18 – 20 minutes. (I used milk to apply instead and baked at 180ºC)

These were what I had at the end. Super soft bread with slight crisp on the outer layer.

Afterthoughts:

1. You must grease the baking tray or place a baking sheet. Otherwise, good luck removing them from the baking tin. (Tip: When applying a glaze before baking, be careful not to “glue” the loaf to the rim of the loaf pan or the baking sheet. This not only will make it difficult to remove the loaf from the pan, but can prevent the loaf from expanding fully in the oven. Use a clean, soft pastry brush to apply the glaze.)

2. Use a large transparent plastic sheet (at least 60cm x 30cm) and floured to work on the (wet and sticky) dough. You can also have the measurements placed underneath the plastic sheet

3. I wanted to achieve Petit Provence’s standard. i.e. their outer layer is soft unlike mine with a slight crisp. Perhaps, I’ll reduce temperature to 160ºC and bake slight longer… 25 min?

Will try again (when I buy more bread flour)

Tired day… Made pizza, bread, pineapple fried rice and tom yum seafood soup!