Here’s my submission — A quick garlic tomato focaccia which is really simple, but colorful and tasty :)
It’s simply an overnight bread dough from my fridge, made into a Focaccia with toppings also from my fridge (cherry tomatoes, garlic, bacon and Pecorino). Bread dough is Richard Bertinet’s Olive Oil Dough recipe. It’s really simple and quick to do but tasteful as the dough has been fermented overnight. My way is to add lots of olive oil on baking tray and top of Focaccia dough before adding toppings, the oil will make the bread really crispy outside and maintain soft inside. Love it! <3
Bread is really simple to make and enjoyable… so make more real bread, eat more real bread. Happy World Bread Day!
I was thinking what sourdough I would like to bake to participate in the World Bread Day today, and I finally determined to bake these Salty Rolls (咸卷) instead. Besides Bo Lo Bao and Cocktail Buns, these bread rolls are also one of the several iconic breads in Hong Kong, and you can easily find them in Hong Kong’s local bakeries or Cha Chaan Teng. As the name goes they are more salty and buttery in taste. I’m thinking they are possibly adapted from Western white bread/roll formulas and re-formulated according to our local taste.
They also have other names including 軟豬仔包 (soft piggy rolls?) and 芝麻卷 (sesame rolls). Below is a recipe I learnt from a Cantonese bread class few years back. Have a try and let me know if you like them. Happy World Bread Day! :)
Recipe (makes 6)
Bread flour
200g
100%
Water
130g
65%
Butter
20g
10%
Sugar
10g
5%
Milk powder
6g
3%
Salt
4g
2%
Yeast
3g
1.5%
Egg wash (optional, I have skipped in mine)
White sesames (optional, for sprinkling on top)
1) Mix the ingredients and knead the dough until full gluten development.
2) 1st fermentation until double in size (1-1.5hr)
3) Form into 6 rolls
4) 2nd fermentation until double in size (1hr)
5) Brush the rolls with some water or egg wash, sprinkle the sesame seeds
Crack the crispy thin balls and salad springs out from inside – it’s a recipe from Richard Bertinet whereas the bread dough is rolled to very thin and bake on high heat so that the dough puffs up.
Guess how to hide the salad? Dig a small hole to place the salad veggie in, turn over the balls and serve. This will bring much happiness when the people crack the balls. The crisps adds textures to the greens too. :)
Made a white bread for gathering with friends. Recipe is from Peter Reinhart’s famous Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I’ve used a Japanese brand “Nisshin” bread flour which is popular among some local and Taiwanese bread bloggers. The flour is finely milled and hence the bread turns out very soft and silky. Yummy :)
White Bread (Adapted from Page43 of Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”)
Bread can be “cooked” in different ways. It can be baked, steamed, grilled, cooked in a tandoor, etc. Do you know it can also be cooked with a pan? Some of you might know pita can be cooked with a frying pan. Below is a Chinese bun which is cooked with a pan too.
Basically it’s a the dough of steamed bun, pan-fried for a minute at the beginning and then added with water to cook the bun. Therefore upper part of the bun tasted like a steamed bun while the bottom is crispy to give a tasteful texture. It’s usually filled with vegetable and minced pork inside.
My oven is broken down (!) and hence I prepared this pan-fried bun to celebrate the World Bread Day 2011. Do you know any other ways to “cook” a bread? :)
Flour 160g (the chef taught me there’s a kind of flour used for making Chinese buns which the protein is lower than bread flour but higher than cake flour, and not exactly the same as all purpose flour. The common one is in this link. Or you can look for other brands in China town that are used for making buns)
Sugar 16g
Yeast 2g
Baking powder 2g
Water 80g
Filling
Minced pork 80g (the pork is minced with a chopper by myself. Also it’s better to have about 1/4 fat inside which would help the filling taste juicer. The fat should be cut into small dices and mixed to the minced lean pork)
Salt 1/2 tps
Rice wine 1/2 tps
Pak Choi 80g (cut into dices. Cooked with boiling water for 20 secs. Drained. Wait till cool and use your palms to squeeze out extra water. This helps softening the vegetable and avoids breaking the dough during wrapping)
Sugar 3 tps
Corn starch 2 tps
Water 60g
Others
Spring onions, Toasted sesame seeds (for sprinkling on the buns)
To prepare the buns:
1) Mix all the ingredients until smooth. A window pane test is not required
2) Rest for 20 mins (no need double in size. Just wait until the dough is relaxed)
To prepare the filling:
1) Mix all the ingredients except water and pak choi
2) Add the water slowly in 5 times. After adding the first 1/5 of water, mix the pork mixture and water with a pair of chopsticks in circular motion until the water is absorbed. Continue until all water is added.
It might look too much water at the beginning but it will all be absorbed by the mixture at last.
3) Add the pak choi
4) Place the filling in refrigerator for at least 30mins and the mixture will be firmer
To fill the buns:
1) Roll the dough into a log and cut into 12pcs
2) Press or roll the small dough into a flat one of 8cm diameter
3) Place 1 tps of filling onto the dough
4) Wrap up the dough (as below video which I found from YouTube)
5) 2nd fermentation is not needed
To pan fry the buns:
1) Heat a frying pan. Add some oil
2) Place the buns to the pan. Each of them should have 1-2 cm spacing between as the buns would be bigger after cooked
3) Pan fry for 1 min. Bottom should look crispy at this moment
4) Add water to the buns to reach 1/2 of the height of the buns. Wait until the water is boiled
5) Cover with a lid until cooked at medium heat
6) Sprinkle with spring onions and toasted sesame seeds
A delicious bread studded with glace cherries, raisins, orange peels, lemon peels mixed with rum. I particularly love the toasted almonds inside which provided more texture and a balance of flavor to the really enriched bread. Did I say the crumb is very tender too? Yum…
Hi! This is my contribution to the Mellow Bakers for this month. Originally a Pain de Mie (or Pullman) on Page 243 of Jeffrey Hamelman’s book “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes“, I tried something fun — a chocolate marble version.
I used 1/3 of the Pullman bread recipe for this bread. The choco filling is from this website. Very clear step-by-step photos there. I was pretty lazy and didn’t put the choco filling in a plastic bag to fridge it in a choco sheet.. I only spreaded the filling on the dough with a knife. The filling was pretty runny without fridged and it was pretty messy when I twisted the dough … you can imagine the filling sort of squeezed out .. so I didn’t twisted the dough much and there’s not much marble in my bread. Should have prepared the choco sheet~!
The choco filling recipe can be sweeter and smoother for me… still this kind of bread is a hit to my family!!
Join Mellow Bakers! Eat Real Bread! Bake Real Bread!
Another delicious bread from Dan Lepard‘s recipe of “The Handmade Loaf“. I think I love his book as the breads are so different but taste good at the same time. A number of his breads are made with alcohol and I love alcohol too. Hehe. These buns are also made with 10% brandy, also 10% double cream, 20% butter and some egg and sugar. The rolls are brushed with more brandy before baking. I like the aroma of the bread and never thought brandy with sweet bread go so well. The crumb is tended to taste like scones than soft rolls. Nice to serve with jam. Ah.. Xmas’s coming, think they’ll be good for a precious Xmas morning too. :)
A Dan Lepard‘s recipe from his classic “The Handmade Loaf“. The bread used almond milk made with sugar, water and skinned almonds as the liquid for the dough. I love the crust so much as it tastes crispy and nutty because of the nut milk. It’s so unique compared with what we normally have on a white loaf. Recommend to try.
Weekend is a bread baking day for me. Today I also went to a Wine & Dine Festival, trying some different kinds of red wine and food. To me it’s still not as satisfying as baking a loaf of good bread. This multi-grain bread was baked in the afternoon today. It’s adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Five-Grain Bread. I did not have oats that the recipe required, hence I replaced with whole spelt grains (and changed the name to multi-grain bread as spelt is different from the remained grains, haha). Overall hydration was remained the same.
Although this is a direct dough, this bread is still quite flavorful with the grains. Especially the crumb is really soft like those stored bought sandwitch loaves. :-)
There were larger bursts on 2 slashes in the bread than the other 2, which is probably because I cut the former 2 deeper. Yet it’s still a natural beauty for me. :-)
1. Mix the final dough ingredients until the gluten network is fairly well developed
2. Bulk fermentation: 2 hours (or overnight retarding). Fold the dough once after 1 hour
3. Shape the dough
4. Final fermentation : 1 to 1.5 hours at 76F
5. With normal steam, bake at 460F for 40 minutes. The egg and oil may contribute color to the baking loaf quickly, so the oven may need to be lowered by 10 – 20F partway through the bake. Round loaf takes slightly longer than oblong one (mine was 50 minutes)
Bread can be “cooked” in different ways. It can be baked, steamed, grilled, cooked in a tandoor, etc. Do you know it can also be cooked with a pan? Some of you might know pita can be cooked with a frying pan. Below is a Chinese bun which is cooked with a pan too.
To pan fry the buns: 
I used 1/3 of the Pullman bread recipe for this bread. The choco filling is from this 
The choco filling recipe can be sweeter and smoother for me… still this kind of bread is a hit to my family!!
Another delicious bread from 
