{"id":4495,"date":"2020-02-26T08:54:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T00:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=4495"},"modified":"2020-02-26T08:54:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T00:54:47","slug":"baking-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=4495","title":{"rendered":"Baking Bread"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I baked bread for the first time two weeks ago. It’s amazing what four basic ingredients – plain flour, warm water, dry yeast, and sea salt – plus an oven can achieve. I had also added some fresh rosemary and dill. Then all I needed to do was wait. Wait for the yeast to work its magic in the fridge. I left it in the fridge to rise for a day. The recipe said the longer the dough is left to rest, the more it will taste like sourdough bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After taking it out of the fridge, I shaped the dough and let it come to room temperature. It was like playing with play dough. I decided to make four small bread rolls instead of a huge one. I then had to score the bread i.e. put an incision on the top of the dough to control where the dough splits as the evaporation takes place during the baking process. I never knew there was such a huge science to scoring bread until I started reading about it because of my bread making experiment. As scoring results in a pattern, some bakeries use scoring as a way of branding their bread. I like that! There is an instrument called a lame (pronounced the French way “lahm”) specially for scoring bread. It looks like a razor blade with a handle. And the way you angle the blade as the bread is scored makes a difference to the bread’s eventual look. But I’m not there yet – I just used my serrated knife which most recipes I came across said would suffice. Anyway all fascinating stuff which I want to read more into!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bun in the oven, literally. And no, definitely not a bun in the metaphorical oven – too old for that now! I decided to put one in first just to try. It turned out ok, so I put the other three in for the second round. It took about 25min each round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Voila! Decent looking artisnal bread rolls about 10cm big. There were a good number of air pockets and the crust crackled as I sliced through it with my serrated knife – such a delightful sound coming from fresh bread! This type of bread would go well with soup or just eaten plain with some extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar to accompany it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I consider this first bread making attempt a success. I could have put more rosemary and dill to make the flavour stronger. Doubt I will be making bread again so soon as I think the cost of the ingredients and electricity that goes into baking far exceeds that of buying them! But still it’s good to know I now know how to do it. Plus it’s a fun process. I have always liked creating things and creating something that can be eaten makes it all the more enjoyable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What sparked off the idea of making bread was because I was feeling restless while being trapped at home the weekend that Sydney (and many parts of New South Wales) was decimated by the rain. This is what happens when one’s weekend activities are centred around the outdoors. In any case, I thought the process of kneading dough for bread might help to kill some time, so I went online searching for recipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead I came across many “no-knead” bread recipes so I set out to bake that instead. And I’m glad I did! Will think of what other breads I can make next if\/when I find myself “trapped” again!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I baked bread for the first time two weeks ago. It’s amazing what four basic ingredients – plain flour, warm water, dry yeast, and sea salt – plus an oven can achieve. I had also added some fresh rosemary and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[133,39],"class_list":["post-4495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","tag-baking","tag-bread"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4495"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4505,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions\/4505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}