my turn.
tiffy's gone on with bread and i've tried my hand at making a cake with olive oil. not just because i want to see how olive oil turns out in cake, but because i was just too darn lazy to bring butter to room temperature. ok, but that turned out to not be a problem this time because i didnt even have butter in my fridge.

over and beyond all that.

the extra-virgin olive oil smelled VERY green when i mixed it with the sugar initially and that scared me a little. because i haven't seen a cake that smells like grass and im quite sure that if i had that i wouldnt eat it. mixed in with the zest and all it was a fragrant handsoap-smelling cake, but i went ahead and baked it. (just because i couldnt be bothered to start again, and i didnt have extra ingredients anyway)


just out, the cake was fragrant. GOOD citrus-smelling and i left it to cool as instructed, although i was worried that i had overbaked it. taking it out of the parchment-lined pan was simple, not cutting into it wasn't.

fresh out of the oven, it was fluffy and the citrus was intense, but just so. the next morning, the citrus had mellowed a little and was pleasantly, but i wonder if i might possibly make a glaze the next time, which i didnt this time because i didnt want to overwhelm the subtle olive oil flavor. have to mention though, that if i hadn't known it was there, i wouldnt quite place it, only the fact that it isnt quite a butter cake.

easy enough, with the olive oil and an electric mixer. i adapted the recipe from here, and made very minor changes, which are in the parentheses.

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1+1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp clementine zest (I used about 1.5 tbsp clementine zest, and 1 tbsp lemon zest
3 large eggs
1 cup clementine juice (about 1 cup fresh squeezed clementine juice, and the remaining made up with store-bought orange juice)

QN. What's this?


ANS. My attempt at Struan AKA breakfast loaf for the next two weeks.



Meh, there's bits of parchment paper stuck to it. I put in rice, some multigrain mix consisting of bran, oats and other nonsense stuff so it's pretty nice to eat (rice is still a little crunchy. note to self, cook longer next time). It was hellish to mix the dough because the recipe didn't ask for enough flour.... had to keep going a tablespoonful at a time until it could pass the windowpane test. I must have added nearly a cup more of WW flour!

Click here for the recipe, thanks to Google books for digitalizing this.

I think I should have left it to rise longer, it was more dense than my usual whole wheat bread. Oh well, there's always next time. Yesterday I forgot about the slice of struan sitting in the oven and I had black toast :(

This is a test recipe, so I can't share it. Sorry...


There wasn't any class this morning so I baked stuff. Pretzel-stuff. Ok, I wasn't that impulsive, I started it the night before, knowing I didn't have any class until 10am. Behold, the magic of dough:

...It's just a mixture of flour and water. Yeesh, and instant yeast. And then you mix it, and mix it, and get a dough. If you knead it well enough, it comes out really smooth and passes the windowpane test, etc.

(It's halfway there. I didn't take the final picture because my hands were busy.) The hint is to start off with a very wet dough and knead it well. IT WILL COME TOGETHER, you must believe in it. And work on it. It's a pretty good philosophy for life.

Then you leave it overnight and shape it into pretzels the next day. My pretzels are waay too puffy! I'll work on that next time. You basically dip it in some baking soda solution to get a gorgeous crust, like so:

And so I now have 11 mini-pretzels to be distributed to people I meet randomly. Ok, now it's 9 because of some early risers hanging around.

If you notice, the salt seems greyish. That's because it's french grey sea salt. It cost 5 usd and I regret spending money on such a luxury. On the bright side, I can use it to make really awesome french bread... You can actually taste the difference? (Or it's my mind rationalizing my purchase.) There's this intense saltiness that reminds you of the sea. You don't really need it to make bread, but it's nice for sprinkling on pretzels.

IT's winter, and no sign of spring. Yeast doesn't grow well in the cold, but it's 80F inside, plenty warm for them. And, what better to chase away wintry blues than freshly baked cinnamon rolls?



The solution is simple. Freshly baked raisin-filled cinnamon rolls. Be careful to pop any raisins that rise out of the rolls into the dough again, else they will burn and be sourish-bitter rather than sweet.



My room smelt like cinnamon raisins all weekend.

Signing out,
syn

i have a fear of yeast actually. well not a phobia in the sense that i might not exactly shudder and die a slow swollen-mouth-red-rashed death with using it, but i've had far more failures with yeast than i've had with other leaveners such as b-s or b-p.

my first few tries with anything yeasty just ended in painful gloops of sticky dough and insufficient inflation which were darn annoying, just because they require so much more work than cakes and the results were awfully dismal. but yeast+cinnamon is such a fundamental smell, one that always makes me feel at home (even though i hardly had the smell of cinnamon at home). i think it's the whole warmness.

tonight i was pushed by an inclination for some me-time to play with yeast and set about to make monkey bread, which is something i've always thought of trying out, but was too apprehensive to start.

but this was easy. yeast+water and then the remaining ingredients. 2 resting periods and then the juvenile process of rolling dough in butter and a sugar-spice mixture which just made me think of playdoh.


and how i've never played with playdoh because i thought it was smelly. well, my second (or maybe first) childhood then.

i was worried about this because i didnt have brown sugar and used golden caster, which i worried might not melt properly. the melted butter and sugar will SCARE you but i assure you this is no worse than cake. which is basically the same just that the butter and sugar is in the dough. i haven't made you feel any better, have i?


15 minutes into baking and the kitchen smelled amazing. 35 minutes later and it was done, well risen and smelling so good. this is 1230am, by the by and my hallmates stole about 50% of the entire pan such that i am currently hiding the pan in my room which makes my room smell good and me feel hungry :| well.



since i hardly changed anything about the recipe beyond the fact that i used caster sugar rather than brown, i'll link you to the original on baking bites.

1:29am now and it's time for sleep. smelling cinnamony and liking it.

by the way, this is how the bread looks like now, after my hallmates got at it. nothing else makes me feel so appreciated, really.


and so ends my first post. a job well done i think.

This blog is dedicated to the friends and family who have endured our initial attempts at the craft of baking, and who have remained our (un?)willing testers since.

As a log of our progress in the craft of baking, we promise to post lots of pictures, and recipes if possible.

Here's to delicious desserts and beautiful breads!

syn&sonya