Thursday, September 13, 2012

Artisan Bread in 5 minutes

Follow my success with the focaccia bread, I started reading more about bread making.
Someone mentioned the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
Read it.
No, not the entire book.  Just enough to get started on the recipe.

And I got so confused.

I now got into the habit of weighing my ingredients, not measuring them anymore.
So I tried to convert the recipe into weight.

The author's conversion in this article on his website is different from other source(s).   And I ran out of AP flour and wanted to use bread flour, but not sure of what changes I needed to do.  So I was glad that he provided the hydration percentage.

For most unbleached AP flours (Gold Medal, etc.):  75% hydration
King Arthur AP:  81% hydration
Bread flour:  83% hydration
High-gluten flour:  85% hydration.

So I started my dough with...

700g bread flour
581g warm water
2 teaspoons yeast (I didn't use the whole 1.5 Tablespoons yeast called for in the recipe).
2 teaspoons salt.

The dough has been sitting out for over an hour.
Will bake it tomorrow and update.

I baked it.  It was.. a bit of a downer.  It wasn't bad, but wasn't great.  I didn't even bother to take a picture of the inside.  It wouldn't be qualified for "artisan."


The slashing was horrible I know.  It was my first time slashing, and I didn't have a sharp knife so I used a steak knife.

I also use the dough to make Cinnamon Rolls.  Again, disappointing.

Not sure if I would try it again.
Posted by at 8:41 PM 0 comments

The Best Focaccia Bread Ever

This. was. the best focaccia ever.
So it was the best focaccia I've baked.
And it was the first focaccia I've ever baked.
Still, it has the potential to be the best focaccia in the universe.

Except it was a bit salty.  Okay, really salty!
But that was because I used the Alessi Coarse Sea Salt, which made all my dishes so salty.
Who says Mediterranean sea salt is less salty?  Next time, I'll stick with Diamond Kosher Salt.

Could it be that I used 1 tsp salt instead of the 1/2 teaspoon called for in the recipe?  Hmmm...

Again, the focaccia was so good.  And so easy.
So easy that I could bake it every day.  But that would mean gaining one pound in a day.  7 lbs in a week.  30 lbs in a month. Yikes!

It required no kneading.  My kind of bread.  I've heard of no knead bread before, but never paid any attention to it.  Until now.

So good that I'm creating a post for it.  So I can keep it for myself.  And for posterity.



See?  Doesn't it look gorgeous?

And I lifted this recipe from CI-2010Sep&Oct.  Cryptic eh?  Well that was intentional.

On to the recipe already!

Biga

1/2 cup (2-1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (2-2/3 ounces) warm water (100-110F)
1/4 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast.

 Combine flour, water and yeast in a large bowl.  Stir to combine.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature (70F) overnight (8 - 24 hours).  Use immediately or store in refrigerator for up to 3 days (allow to stand at room temp 30 minutes before proceeding with recipe).

Dough

2-1/2 cups (12-1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for shaping
1-1/4 cups (10 ounces) warm water (100-110F)
1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
Kosher salt (don't use Alessi Coarse Sea Salt!)
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves

 Stir flour, water and yeast into biga until uniform.  Cover with plastic wrap and let raise at room temp for 15 minutes.

 Sprinkle 2 teaspoons salt over dough, stir into dough until thoroughly incorporated.  

 Cover with plastic wrap and let raise at room temp for 30 minutes. (#1)

 Fold dough.  Lift edge and and fold toward middle.  Turn bowl.  Fold.  Turn bowl.  Fold.  All around, about 8 turns.

 Cover with plastic wrap and let rise another 30 minutes. (#2)
Repeat turning and folding.
Cover with plastic wrap and let rise another 30 minutes. (#3)
Repeat turning and folding.

 Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position.  Place baking stone on rack.  Heat overn to 500F at least 30 minutes before baking.

 Transfer dough to a lightly floured counter.  Lightly dust top of dough with flour and divide in half.  Shape each piece of dough into 5-inch round by gently tucking under edges.

 Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with 2 tablespoons olive oil each.  
Sprinkle each pan with 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.  
Place round of dough in pan, top side down; slide dough around pan to coat bottom and sides, then flip over.
Repeat with second piece of dough.
Cover pans with plastic wrap and let rest for 5 minutes.

 Using finger tips, press dough out toward edges of pan.  (If dough resists stretching, let it relax for 5 to 10 minutes before trying again.)  
Using dinner fork, poke surface of dough 25 or 30 times, popping any large bubbles.  
Sprinkle rosemary evenly over top of dough.  
Let dough rest until slightly bubbly, 5 to 10 minutes.

 Place pans on baking stone and reduce oven temperature to 450 degrees. 
Bake until tops are golden brown, 25 to 28 minutes, switching placement of pans halfway through baking.  
Transfer pans to wire rack and let cool 5 minutes.
Remove loaves from pan and return to wire rack. 
Brush tops with any oil remaining in pan.
Let cool 30 minutes before serving.


I baked the focaccia using the lazy steaming method.  I heated roasting pan with the baking stone, and after placing the cake pans onto the stone, I also threw in a few ice cubes into the roasting pan to create stream.  That supposed to do something good to the bread, but I forgot exactly what.

My son commented that the baked (burnt?) rosemary smelled like burnt glue.  Must the the sap from the fresh rosemary.  Next time, I will mix the rosemary with the olive oil before spreading it on so the rosemary won't burn as bad.

My dough was very wet and sticky.  But the focaccia turned out beautifully.  The wet dough created those big holes in the bread.

Note:  The hydration percent of the dough is 84% (the weight of water relative to the weight of flour).
Posted by at 8:27 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Staycation Destinations - Houston Metropolian

I saw this listing in the Fort Bend Parent magazine for staycation destinations in Houston area, and I just have to keep this list somewhere that I can refer to later. 

I considered saving it as a document on my PC, as an email, as a note on my blackberry, but I'm sure it'll be lost among the thousand documents I have.  My blog is the one place that's very sparse.  Besides, I can easy share the list with everyone else.

This would be a list of places I want to take my kids to.  I'm going to give myself until end of Summer of 2013 to cover all the destinations below.

CENTRAL
Free general admission every Thursday from 5-8 pm.
Free general admission on every first Sunday of the month. 
Admission:  Adult/Children 1+: $9
Annual membership $85 Family or $104 Family Plus.
Free general admission every Thursday from 3-6pm (summer) or 2-5pm (winter).
 
Admission:
Permanent Exhibit:  Adult: $15.  Child (3-11): $10.Planetarium or Butterfly Center:  Adult:  $8.  Child:  $7.
Giant Screen Theater:  Adult: $11.  Child: $9.
Free every first Tuesday of the month from 2pm - closing from September 2012 - May 2013.  (Free admission cancelled for July & August 2012).
Free general admission every Thursday from 2-5pm.
Free general admission every Thursday from 10am - 9pm.
NORTH
WEST
EAST
SOUTH
GALVESTON
Posted by at 12:38 PM 1 comments

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Domo-Kun Cookies... NOT

My niece Laney wore a cap the other day to her birthday dinner.
It was brown, with a patch of red rectangle, outline on top and bottom with a string of white triangles, lined with braces.
It was weird looking.
And she loved it.

Then my son Ryan wanted one for himself.
With a mustache.
This is what his cap looks like.


How am I getting so dated?  I should have known about Domo-kun.  How am I going to be a 'cool' Mom if I don't know these things?

So to redeem my 'cool', I decided to bake Laney somehting Domo-kun theme for her birthday.  I settled on the   Domo-kun cookies made by Diamond for Dessert.

What a disaster!

The dough was hard to work with.  It was soft and sticky.  When I left it in the fridge for too long, it got too rigid to shape.  Not cold enough and it was sticky.  And the dimensions provided made really small cookies.  And I didn't know how to shaped the dough to be 1 1/4-inch by 3/4-inch.  By the time you put all the pieces together, the dimensions were lost, and the dough took whatever shape it wanted.

So I started eyeballing it, no measurement.  It was better, but I was quite frustrated with the dough.  The first few cookies might look somewhat Domo-like, but the rest was just pathetic.  Consider the amount of work I put in, and the little number of cookies getting out of the whole thing... Disappointed. 

When time to bake them, I didn't realize that the cookies would expand so much.  That explained the small dimensions given.  My cookies came out meshing into each other. But again, by this time, I already gave up the ideas of even trying to decorate the cookies.  However, I was hoping that they still taste good since it was a Thomas Keller recipe.


The cookies were very tender.  I cut them 1/4-inch thick, but they spread so much during baking that the cookies came out pretty thin.  The cocoa in the brown part was dominant.  And it was salty.  There was 1 1/2 teaspoons in the cookies below.


But they didn't taste too bad actually.  My sisters didn't care for them.  The kids surely didn't care for them.  But they grew on me.  I don't usually eat my own baking, except for those noone else wanted to eat, because I couldn't just throw them out.

So I ate a lot of these cookies.  Maybe that's why they grew on me.  But for sure, I won't be making them again, so no point of getting the recipe.
Posted by at 12:11 PM 0 comments

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Babycakes Cake Pop Maker

I finally bought the Babycakes Cake Pop Maker in March.  Yes, I know the 'Cake Pop' trend is almost over, but I never cared for the original cake pop with the thick gooey frosting mixing in cake and shaping into round balls.  Especially store bought icing.  With shortening.  Enough said.

And I knew about the Babycakes Cake Pop Maker, but I thought it was just too much hassle, until I went to a cake pop party.  Besides, for $20, I can justify for an afternoon activities with my sons and my nieces.  But I also got a Tovolo pancake pen for $10.  It was getting expensive, especially I didn't have any coupon with me.

Before starting, I consulted my best friend, Google, about what to do.  Some tips were helpful, such as using the pancake pen for filling the holes, unplug the maker while filling, coat the holes lightly with oil to prevent sticking, etc.

I started out with a basic vanilla recipe from the booklet that came with the maker.  It turned out well.  Some were round, some were not, and they were all eventually consumed.

This is the basic vanilla mix that came with the instruction booklet.  I didn't fill the wells / holes full enough.

Thus the cake pops came out flat on top.
Then I tried it out with a cake mix since I read that cake mix would work as well.  I wanted a lemon flavor but was too lazy to zest the lemons (that I have not bought), so I got a Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme cakemix. Prepared per instructions, and baked using the Cake Pop Maker. 

Then I tried with the cake mix.  This was the cake mix I used.  You will see that the 'moist' cake mix might not be the best choice for the cake pop maker.

The cake pops were full and well rounded when just baked.

But soon deflated with a cake mix.  The cake were too fluffy and soft and couldn't hold the structure.  Those cake pops made from the recipes from babycakes have firmer, drier and more dense, thus can keep their shapes better.

And finally, the perfect cake pop.  Haa, just kidding!  I just flipped the bottom over.  This must be how the  covered picture from the box was taken.

I went back to the babycakes recipe and tried the lemon one with lemon zest and lemon juice.  Good flavor. But again, a bit drier than cake mix. Tried dipping. The first time, I over heated the candy melt and thus couldn't get it to flow smoothly, no matter now much shortening I added.  I googled and googled and saw that a lot of people were asking the same questions I did - why couldn't I get the smooth shiny texture like others?

I tried again, heating in 20 seconds interval on DEFROST, stirred and stirred, and erred on the side of caution so it wouldn't be overheated.  I was able to create that smooth and shiny texture.  However, by the time the candy got coated and excess dripped off, it was too dry to evenly coated the sprinkles on.  I still needed to play with it a bit more.

My cake pops.  I just tried sprinkles with a few just to experiment.  And actually, by this time, I was pretty lazy and unmotivated to do anything creative.

This is my best one.  I put the sprinkles in the bowl and dip it in right after.  You can see the candy was dried  already.





Posted by at 11:16 AM 0 comments

Thomas the Tank Engine Cupcakes with Marshmallow Fondant

My 2-yo nephew loves trains, especially Thomas the Tank Engine and all his friends.  For his birthday, I wanted to make the cupcakes that his Mom liked, the same recipe that I made last month for the tie-dyed cupcakes.  However, for decoration, I wanted to do a train theme.  With my limited ability as a baker and a decorator, I know that anything 3D is out.  I googled for ideas, combined and simplified and came up with the design below, which I did mostly with the three round fondant cutters I have.  I also tried the marshmallow fondant recipe for the very first time to make these cupcake toppers.

MARSHMALLOW FONDANT
 16 ounces white mini-marshmallows
4 tablespoons water
2 pounds confectioners sugar / powdered sugar
1/2 cup Crisco shortening (for coating your hands with).

I halved the recipe and still had plenty of fondant leftover.

Microwave the marshmallows and water in 30 seconds increment, stir in between, until melted.  It shouldn't take more than 2 minutes.

Mix the powdered sugar in slowly, stirring at first, until too thick to stir.  Grease your hand with Crisco and knead the rest of powdered sugar in until the mixture is soft and pliable.

I thought that I would have to knead a lot, but it came together quickly enough.

I used Wilton gel colors to mix in and color my fondant.  It worked out well.

People claimed that the marshmallow fondant tastes better than store bought fondant, I didn't even taste test it since I don't care for marshmallow nor powdered sugar nor shortening.  However, my son did, and he seemed to not mind it.

I initially made a lot of gray and black fondant thinking of a different design, but that was tedious and took so long, so I decided on this design.  As usually, my son Ryan is my trusted judge, and when he declared that the design "looked really good Mommy," I knew I had a winner.





I didn't make enough green and blue fondant, and past midnight, I didn't want to yet start another batch.  I still had some yellow and red left, with tons and tons of gray and black, so Ryan said let's do Angry Birds cupcakes.  He gave me some ideas for the design, and he even cut out the hair for the head and the tail.  We ended up liking the Angry Birds a lot.


The mouth below is too big.  Make it smaller next time.




Posted by at 10:28 AM 1 comments

Monday, March 5, 2012

The 80/10/10 Diet and Lobster Bisque


One week.  11 pounds, uhm, maybe 12, to go.  I’d settle for 2 pounds.


The Belly Fat Cure didn’t work.  True, I didn’t do anything.  Still. It didn’t work.


Meanwhile, I checked out “The 80/10/10 Diet” by Dr. Douglas Graham.  Did you know the 80 stand for minimum 80% of carb?  Awesome!  The other two 10s represented maximum 10% of protein and 10% of fat.  Hmm, so little fat?  Carb wouldn't taste any good without the fat!


Then, I learnt that the carb weren't my type of carb.  As in all-purpose flour, cake flour, or bread flour.  The 80% carb referred to wholesome, raw, UNCOOKED food.  Which are mostly fruits. Bummer!  Personally, this diet was just too ‘fruity’ for me.  Nix!


So all last week, I spent my team reading diet books while munching on cupcakes, macarons, mango mousse, Costco’s Tuxedo chocolate mousse cake (heaven!), cake pops, and cream puffs.  That didn't help my waistline, or the original 10 pounds I was aiming to get rid of.


Desperate time calls for desperate measure.  I need more than a diet, I need willpower as well.  Thus, “The Seven-Day Total Cleanse:  A Revolutionary New Juice Fast and Yoga Plan to Purify Your Body and Clarify the Mind” by Mary McGuire-Wien seems like the perfect solution for me.  


Talking about liquid diet, I made lobster bisque for the first time last weekend.  It was so good I made it twice!  Actually, I was only helping the first time.


This lobster bisque tasted so much better than the one I tried at Austin’s Eddie V.  The bisque was so salty that I quit after one spoon.  So they replaced with the crab and corn chowder.  Yet again, I couldn’t swallow than two spoons of the chowder either.  They ended up not charging me for the soup.  Maybe it was just my luck that the chef just had an off day.


LOBSTER BISQUE
2 medium onions, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 bulb of fennel, diced
2 tablespoons butter
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons full of tomato paste
2 shrimp bouillon cubes  + 8 cups of water (or 8 cups of lobster liquid)
3 tablespoons beurre manie (as needed)
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup sherry or cognac (or as needed)


I’m writing this recipe from estimation since we didn’t measure anything when we made the bisque.
I’m assuming that you already know how to boil the lobsters.  Something along the line of immersing them in boiling water for about 8 minutes if your lobster is about 1 – 1.5 lbs.  Depending on the size of your pot and the number of lobsters you are boiling, add or subtract a couple minutes.


Reduce the boiling water to about 10 cups.  Remove lobsters’ heads, smash it however you can and put the heads back into the boiling water to extract as much juice out of the lobster as possible.  Use this water for your bisque.  However, you could take the lazy route and use shrimp bouillons instead.  The flavor wouldn’t be as good.


Saute the diced onions, carrots and fennel with 2 tablespoons of butter.  Add 2 bay leaves and 1 teaspoon of paprika into the vegetable mixture.  Cook on medium heat until the vegetables are soft, and the onions turn translucent.  Add 2 tablespoons tomato paste, the 2 shrimp bouillon cubes and 8 cups of water.  (If you have the lobster liquid above, use that instead.)  I’m guessing that we put in about 8 cups of liquid, but it could be more or less, depending on how many people you have to serve.


Continue cooking until the vegetables are cooked really well.  Remove the bay leaves.  Puree the mixture.  Strain.  (I didn’t strain the first time, and it was still awesome, not as smooth as a bisque should be.  If you strive to impress, strain.)


Add the beurre manie slowly, one tablespoon at a time, until thicken.  I don’t remember how much I used really, about 2 tablespoons maybe, and you might like your soup thicker than mine, so adjust as needed.
Add the heavy cream.  Again, depending on how rich you want your bisque.  If you want it lighter, you might want to use half-and-half instead.  Mix well, simmer for a few minutes.  Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.  I didn’t need to add anything else as the lobster boiling water was salted already.


To serve, ladle soup into bowls. Pour about a teaspoon (or a tablespoon, or two, depending on whom you serve it to) of sherry or cognac on top.  If you are lucky enough to still have any lobster meat left at this point, put in the middle of the bowl.  Serve.

Posted by at 9:33 PM 1 comments
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