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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Bread Blogathon begins!

I am on a journey towards turning out that perfect loaf of whole wheat bread(and I'm going to blog about every loaf of course ;)), and to first figure out all the touchy feely aspects of baking bread I was advised to start with white bread :)! Felt a bit weird to me as I try a lot to minimize white flour/maida in my cooking and baking, and a packet of maida lasts for ages at my home, but considering that the store bought ones are nearly completely maida anyway, this didn't sound a bad idea at all.

My first attempt was using the famous James Beard recipe for white bread that I found online here. Most recipes seem to be for 2 loaves, so instead of tampering with the amounts to adjust for one loaf, I decided to play it safe and follow the recipe. I then made a part of it, and refrigerated the rest for the next morning. The only tweak was using Olive Oil instead of butter of course ;). This is what it looked like:

I found that the first rising did not take as long as the recipe mentions, probably because of the warmer weather we have here. When I checked after little more than an hour, it was nicely fluffed and double in size already!

The loaf looks brilliant from the outside, but I found that the insides were a little underdone, especially in the centre. Still trying to figure this out, as I have a convection oven, and even using a lower temperature seems to brown the loaf on the outside very fast. On browsing I found that using foil to cover up the bread after it's half done will stop it from browning/burning on the outside, so got to try that next. Also need to see some videos to learn the correct kneading techniques I guess :).

The dish accompanying it for dinner was Fish Moily - a dish from Kerala that I learnt from my mom-in-law. It's made with seerfish, and has a nice sweet/spicy/tangy combination because of the coconut mik and tomato combination along with green chillies for spice.

9 comments:

  1. Great going....can i invite myself to dinner with some baked treats when I am next in bangalore? :)

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  2. Thanks Aparna :). Yes of course you can. Bread or no bread, we must definitely do that ;).

    Have just got my hands on a couple of bread baking breads (or rather paid a fortune for them ;)), so a lot more bread photos coming up for sure!

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  3. How long have you been trying to make the perfect bread loaf for? Do you think it's an interesting/big enough story to do an article on? Do let me know.

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    1. Dear Rohini,

      Thanks for commenting :). I'm afraid though that this might not be that much of a story at the moment as I've just about started off, have made a few Whole Wheat that didn't turn out too great and then this white bread that was ok but still not perfect :). Hope to try one type of loaf in a week, next is 50% maida/Whole Wheat in a couple more days. Do keep dropping in and we'll see if we can make it a story soon ;).

      And if you don't mind sharing, whom do you write your articles for?

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  4. Oh yum! The fish curry with white bread just sounds too tasty. The only disadvantage of marrying a punju husband was that he does not like fish so I only get to eat it when I am at my parents place. I am craving fish NOW! Do share the fish recipe too.

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    1. Thanks so much for dropping in Swapna, sorry for my late response, but I seem to be having big trouble accessing blogspot. No use of trying alternate browsers too :(.

      The fish dish is called Fish moily - you'll find many versions of the recipe online :). The one I make uses Onions, ginger garlic paste, tomato - all well fried, then add water, add fish once the water is boiling. Finally turn off or move to sim and add the coconut milk.

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  5. Hey, I write for Metrolife. Let me know if you do finish your project at rohinikejriwal@gmail.com Good luck!

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    1. Thanks Rohini, I will be sure to do that :). Meanwhile do follow my blog for further updates (at the times I can actually manage to access it!).

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  6. I love fish moily too. But i love the chicken stew that mum makes and hot fresh bread dipped in it. Heavenly. Also i love appams with stew. Yum yum.

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