Bread, any kind whether crusty, soft and pillowy, sweet or savory, I love them all. Yes, I’ve started baking for the past month or 2, but breads to me was ever easy or doable as the effort and amount of work that goes into a few slices of bread puts me off. Just imagine all the gooey mess, kneading, waiting… hmm…
This post will be longer than my usual but I’ll share what worked and what did not in my first bread making experience.
Upon searching for some recipes, there were actually doable ones which were not intimidating. Experiences of 3 different loaves will be shared but I fully agree that this Recipe from Nagi is quite fail proof!
Very basic ingredients. If there’s no bread flour, all purpose or plain flour works tooThis pic is such a bad example, the salt was on the yeast 😱 thank goodness it did not ‘kill’ the yeast as long as we work fast! Water temp should be around 45degc, comfortable enough for your fingers to bear with but still on the hot side, think onsen temperature 😉In my 1st attempt, there could be more water added than what was required so the batter was quite wet but it’s perfectly ok, continue to let it proof. This batch was proofed in my living room which was somewhat warm around 27degcTada! After some waiting, the dough rose At this stage, cover the dough thoroughly with flour to prevent sticking to surface. Transfer to a lined cast iron pot but my oven was too tiny to fit the pot, and so I had to use a water bath below my baking tinLike this, the tray and baking tin were black so a little hard to see the placement. The baking tin was placed directly on a water bath about 1.5cm of boiling waterAfter 45min of baking at 220 – 230degc, looked good. Nagi took 30min cast iron pot lid on and 12min lid off at 230degc. Different ovens have different settings and so do test and see how much time it takes on yours.Even with 45min of baking, the loaf was still not really ready as the base of the bread was abit gummy and dense. But toast the slices before eating improves the taste a little. I had mine with some garlic butter.
Flip over to page 2 for my other 2 experiences using somewhat similar recipe with some tweaks!
Delicieuxpate 