What else?... oh right, its not going to be Julia Child's recipes, its going to be Paul Hollywood's and its not got be in 365 days, its going to be once a week... so we are in (or I am in) for the long run. Why I am doing this?? I want to learn how to bake... I am pretty basic, only a few cakes and perhaps once or twice biscuits... So I want to practice proper baking and who is better than Paul's stuff?
So from this week forward, I will bake one thing from his book (How to Bake). Also I am not going to repeat the recipe etc exactly like the book... I will mention top ingredients and basic how to and then mainly talk about my experience and feelings and thoughts about how the recipe went and how I felt about the whole things, plus other chit chats etc. So Mr Hollywood can rest assured that there are no copyright issues...
So today I will start with the very first recipe.... Basic White Tin Bread.
Main thing is that I need white bread flour... all I have in my cupboard is plain flour... so of to the shops to get some white bread flour. I am however quite proud that I have instant yeast in my cupboard... (I am that good!). But I cannot go to the shops right now to be honest.. I have a deadline, need to review three conference papers for EHF2018 and I think the chair is going to send me a very angry e-mail if I miss today's deadline. So will save this post and return in about 3-4 hours...
More like 5-6 hours and a trip to the shops, I ended up buying the right flour... instead of strong, I went for very strong (with 14% protein). Mixed it with salt (8grams seems like a lot of salt) and kneed for about 10 minutes... It is right now resting and rising in a bowl while I am seated at the kitchen table working on a proposal that is due tomorrow...
Here is the dough... not that you don't know what a dough looks like, but I think it will make a nice before and after shot.
You see there are some olive oil bits at the base, I may have over used olive oil, but its fine. Nobody complained about too much olive oil (ever!) and if they did, they are not worth listening to.
OK, back to proposal and then I have a project meeting at 9 pm (the meeting is with GBC people in Toronto) and after that we might have a doubled in size dough ready for the next bit.
2.5 hours, a few paragraphs added to the proposal and one project meeting later, the dough is now doubled in half and then off to the rising stage. So knocking the air out ( which is a lot of kicking and hitting) and then putting the dough in the tin for another hour of proving and rising. (I am not going to take a photo of this bit, think dough in a tin and you are there!).
Another hour of working on the proposal and then we are ready for the oven.
... it is around 11 pm, the proposal not going as planned, somehow I need to think about a two pager diagram that summarises the innovative approach... On another note the dough is resisting any form of rise... I had glorious plans for this pan, alas! I may ditch both (proposal and the bread) for tonight, go take refuge in my book (Lee Child's Echo Burning) that neither disappoints nor confuses. I will store the dough in the plastic bag in the tin in the fridge and return in the morning... who know maybe the universe is calling for hot bread for the morning rather than a late night snack.
Ladies and gentleman, instant yeast is not the same as active dried yeast... so in effect my bread had no rise whatsoever... (for information about the difference between yeasts see here).
The bread is however delicious and as you can see half of it was gone in no time.
I will repeat this experience (same recipe, correct yeast interaction) and post the updates next week.
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