Recipes, please. Do you have a “bread machine” or do you actually construct doughs that you bake in an oven? (one of life’s great pleasures, actually, is kneading dough and smelling bread yeast corpses as they’re baked out, imo) And if you do, what kind of oven?
[quote=“flike”]
Recipes, please. Do you have a “bread machine” or do you actually construct doughs that you bake in an oven? (one of life’s great pleasures, actually, is kneading dough and smelling bread yeast corpses as they’re baked out, imo) And if you do, what kind of oven?[/quote]
Oven, NT$1500 standard “big” oven bought in Geant. The biggest size available for below NT$2k in a local hypermarket will do fine.
Ingredients.
0.6L warm water.
One small bag of dry yeast. (
I can almost smell that bread! I really miss having a regular oven. Frozen pizzas and TV dinners. I have a Kaiser that makes bread and it tastes very good.
Mr. He, you are a fine addition to humanity. Thanks for the recipe, I’m bakin.
Since you bake bread at least once a week, you may not know that baking bread is actually one of the most difficult things to do on a one-off basis. It takes a lot of practice to bake good bread consistently. For example, I love your hot pinkie ==> dead yeast advice. Most bakers, like you, don’t keep track of temperatures or amounts, they just know by experience. But bread yeast actually die if exposed to temps above about 55C, and the dough has to be kept warm and moist before it will rise. In other words, the range of temps within which bread dough will rise satisfactorally is quite small. In fact, when I bake, and it’s not once a week (in fact, never yet in Taiwan), I use a dry yeast method, adding the yeast to my flour before pouring in warm water/milk, whatever, just to ensure that my yeast will live to do their work. Many bakers consider your method, wet yeast, the most difficult one to master. I think that baking in Taiwan’s generally warm temperatures and relatively high humidity can only help bread bakers here. Congratulations!
And thanks again. Now I’m going to go get some good unsalted butter and bake out! If only I could get my hands on some good Guinness (Extra Stout, sold only in North America, not that vile Foreign Extra Stout available here), I’d be in heaven. Nothing like good stout, Gillian Welch, and hot-buttered fresh bread to make me one very happy camper.
Happy New Year!
Toss a little oatmeal and/or wheat germ into that bread and it comes out fluffier. Not like big matthew. 
Be sure that you give it enough time to rise and then beat it down. Let it rise twice.
To turn it into a focaccia, add a little sea salt and some rosemary~ 
and eat with balsamic and olive oil. Mama mia…
Can you get those breadmaker alarm closk here? And are they any good? Waking up to the scent of warm fresh bread would put me in a delightful quandry: to have my morning shag, or to have breakfast?
This is an easy simple bread recipe. Should be kneaded with a kitchen robot or similar. If kneaded by hand I guess you need to add a little water.
mix 300 gr high gluten and 200 gr whole wheat flour
add 5 gr of instant dry yeast or 15 grams fresh yeast.
add 8 gr of salt
add 320 cc of water (temp. 34 C) with 2 table spoons of olive oil.
knead in the robot for about 2 minutes, by hand about 10 minutes or until smooth and flexible.
Form into a ball and dump in an oiled bowl and cover with a wet kitchen towel, let sit at a temp. of 30-34 C until doubled or trippled in volume ( about 30 minutes). Beat it flat. Form your loaf and put it in a bread mold or on a baking sheet and let sit for about 1 hour at a temp of 34 C. You should prevent the loaf from getting dry, so probably you need to spray a little water on it after about 30 minutes.
At lower temp. rising time should be extended.
Some people use an inflated trash bag to let the loaf rise inside it preventing it from drying out.
Pre heat your oven at around 200-210 C and bake your loaf for about 35-40 minutes at this temp.
To get a crispie crust you should spray water inside your oven the first 5 minutes of baking to form steam.
When ready the loaf should be about 2-3 times the original volume. The loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.
Variations can be made by adding herbs, nuts etc.
Keeps about 2-3 days. If stored in freezer you should pre-cut it into slices and when used just spray every slice with a little water and put it in a toaster for 2-3 minutes, tastes like fresh baked.
[quote=“bottleneck”]This is an easy simple bread recipe…add 320 cc of water (temp. 34 C) with 2 table spoons of olive oil.
knead in the robot for about 2 minutes, by hand about 10 minutes or until smooth and flexible.
Form into a ball and dump in an oiled bowl and cover with a wet kitchen towel, let sit at a temp. of 30-34 C until doubled or trippled in volume ( about 30 minutes). Beat it flat. [Note: Alien advises doing this twice, using Mr. He’s recipe, but bottleneck’s using high-gluten flour in addition to whole-wheat, which is already high in gluten, and generally the more you “handle” or knead high-gluten flour, the less fluffy your bread will be. Doing so does add a more Germanic, tougher farm-bread texture, though, one that many people prefer.] Form your loaf and put it in a bread mold or on a baking sheet and let sit for about 1 hour at a temp of 34 C. You should prevent the loaf from getting dry, so probably you need to spray a little water on it after about 30 minutes.
At lower temp. rising time should be extended.
Some people use an inflated trash bag to let the loaf rise inside it preventing it from drying out…To get a crispie crust you should spray water inside your oven the first 5 minutes of baking to form steam…[/quote]
Thanks for the recipe, I especially appreciate the methods you trace out here to keep the dough in shape, to give it a good crust, etc. Since Taiwan’s climate is so drastically different from the North American one I baked in before, all these tips really help. When bread dough is perfectly risen, it should have a satiny sheen to its surface, independent of moisture. It looks kind of silky, imo. I believe that in baker parlance this silky-surface appearance is proof that the dough is ready for baking; thus the process of dough rising or doubling in volume prior to baking is called “proofing” it. In the US, sometimes I let my dough rise or proof in my oven, which was turned to 210F (98C). I put a damp towel over my dough, too, too keep it moist. Occasionally in the winter even this didn’t provide enough heat and humidity (your 30-34C range), though, and I remember once turning my drafty apartment (in an old warehouse) heat way up, taking my dough to the bathroom, turning on the shower using only hot water, shutting the bathroom door, and hoping. Once that method worked, once it did not. I baked a 90mm tall loaf anway; it was tasty enough but unfortunately the texture too closely resembled cement, or brick, and it ended its useful life as feed for urban doves, crows, and pigeons that apparently had the beaks of woodpeckers. Or maybe the bums beat each others brains out with it, whatever. 
And I noticed that I made a BIG error when I said:
Um, at 55C those yeasts are dead as doornails. If I had doublechecked before posting, I would have written that they die at temps above about 48C. The range between about 45C-48C is not useful for baking bread, and I believe that when Mr. He says “your pinkie feels hot” he means that the temperature of the water is above normal human temperature, or 37C. So if it feels warm to your pinkie, it’s probably about 40C or so, give or take. Yeah, 34C is way healthier for 'em, 7C is a fatal error for bread yeast.
Now, I wonder if adding a little sugar to the water used to spray the loaf moist would add even more color to the crust…hmm. Thanks again!
I would like to use a little bit of sugar and then spray it. Letting it raise 2 times is very important. As a matter of fact, my bread raises very fast in summer and slow in winter. I just use a piece of cloth to cover it, that’s all.
Alien, do you use whole oatmeal? Can you put corn flour into the bread for added structure?
You know, the regular oatflakes you buy at the supermarket. Or if you can find wheat germ, that too (health food shops carry). Just toss in a bit. It comes out much fluffier, not so dense. And I don’t use eggs. Only water, yeast, baking powder and a bit of oil. This is more akin to foccacia. Pick up sea salt and rosemary at Jason’s, I reckon.
You can get rosemary, oatmeal, and milled corn in Yangmei, but wheat germ is something I can’t get here. Thanks a lot, I will try your recipe next time.
BTW, I regulate the fluffyness by using wholegrain flour (easy to get even in Yangmei) and by shortening the second raising time. First I raise it to double size in the bowl, the second time I put it on the baking pan and let it raise there. Last time I baked I forgot everything about the bread, and it more or less filled the oven and became very fluffy. The taste remained great though.
in the winter i put my bowl of dough on top of the water boiler dispenser thing. that keeps it nice and cozy for a good rise. 
Some years ago I made myself a proofing box with a heating element and thermostat so that I’m able to control the temp and in a way humidity (by spraying water in the box).
I can control temp. up to 40 C which is enough to make my own yogurt. I also use the box to make my fresh cheese.
Anyway it works well.
I made made all kinds off bread already and about two years ago I bought this book “breads of the world” with 100’s of recipies. It’s a great book.
I even made my own sour dough in Taiwan, from scratch, but couldn’t keep it up due to too busy.
A good idea is to put your dough for proofing on top of the oven while pre-heating it.
How did you make the sourdough?
I have been thinking about that, as my parents used to make their own sourdough, however I’d like to know how long you can go between each baking session and keeping the sourdough alive.
[quote=“bottleneck”]Some years ago I made myself a proofing box with a heating element and thermostat so that I’m able to control the temp and in a way humidity (by spraying water in the box).
I can control temp. up to 40 C which is enough to make my own yogurt. I also use the box to make my fresh cheese.
Anyway it works well.
I made made all kinds off bread already and about two years ago I bought this book “breads of the world” with 100’s of recipies. It’s a great book.
I even made my own sour dough in Taiwan, from scratch, but couldn’t keep it up due to too busy.[/quote]
That’s a great idea, a stand alone proofing box. By the way, did you have to make any changes to times/temps/ingredients to make the book’s recipes work in Taiwan?
Real sourdough, god, I got to get out more. And fresh yogurt and cheese, too? Jesus, this is better than the donut thread. Do you have any recipes you care to share?
now i’m very curious. what kind of cheese?
How did I make sourdough? The normal way, mixing flour and water and putting it on my fridge for a few days, stirring it and leaving it on the fridge, stirring it, adding a little new mixture and so on. As long as it takes to get a bubbly mass. I did it in October 3 years ago. Winter in Taiwan is the best time to do it, summer is to hot. Temperature should be around 18 - 24 C. All depends on how many yeasts and micro-organismes are in your locale air. You could cover it with a piece of nylon stocking to prevent insects raiding your mixture.
I kept the starter in the fridge in a ceramic bowl with a lid, made bread twice a week. It’s kind of complicated in the beginning to find the right way to make the dough for baking, getting the proper proofing time, consistency. And … never forget to set aside a little to start over again. The new starter batch should come from the fermented (proofed) dough before the actual dough is made and salt is addes. I always made a dough mixture with high fluid content and let it sit overnight in my proofing box at around 28 C, than I set appart the new starter batch before adding flour and salt to the mixture to make the bread. I’d say experience will save the day.
As I said before, experience and practicing is needed to get good results. The first time you make a new type of bread it won’t be as good as the second and following times. But most is experience, knowing how long to knead, when to stop proofing and and bake at what temp.
My cheese is a kind of soft fromage blanc (cottage cheese) type. I make it from milk powder or fresh goat’s milk that I buy from a goat farmer.
My yogurt is made from milk powder or milk with powder added to get the right consistency. Dairy companies do the same as milk won’t give the same results year round. And … some add gelling agents to get consistency.
I always bring the cultures from my home country when I return to Taiwan.
Actually, I have tried to use the trick with spraying water into the oven when baking. The results speak for themselves. Te crust is much thinner and harder… Looks a little bit glazed too. I now wnjoy the intense pleasure of biting into a thin crusty surface and then eat the solid, yet softish wholegrain bread inside… Goes well with everything ans is a good way to start the day.
I use a small atomizer, and spray below the pan with the bread.
I guess that you could use a bowl with water to create the steam as well, but spraying the surface works well too.
[quote=“Mr He”][quote=“flike”]
Recipes, please. Do you have a “bread machine” or do you actually construct doughs that you bake in an oven? (one of life’s great pleasures, actually, is kneading dough and smelling bread yeast corpses as they’re baked out, imo) And if you do, what kind of oven?[/quote]
Oven, NT$1500 standard “big” oven bought in Geant. The biggest size available for below NT$2k in a local hypermarket will do fine.
Ingredients.
0.6L warm water.
One small bag of dry yeast. (
Gotta say that recipe kind of surprises me, too, Mr. He. Oil, eggs, sugar? Sounds more like brioche than regular bread to me (which is hardly “British-American,” whatever that might be 
).
I agree with the poster above – all I want in my bread is flour, water, salt and yeast, unless I’m making Aberdeen rowies, in which case, you can as much fresh butter as the mixture will take.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm! Rowies!