Rosemary and Potato Bread

For the last two weeks, I was not in my usual baking self as I was busy training for Melbourne Marathon on 14 Oct 2012. This is my very first marathon and I have completed it in 3 hrs 54 min 56 sec! I was totally amazed with this result and thought that I was running very slowly with all these pains throughout the journey. As I was approaching the finishing line, I was feeling quite emotional recalling two years back when I couldn't even run 3 km after my Cesarean complication. I must say that my past two years has been an amazing journey of my life. I'm so glad that I have been running and baking a lot and loves every aspect of my new found hobbies...

Amongst the things that I love, these are the beautiful ingredients that I love and used to make this loaf of bread. The desiree potatoes, fleur de sel, rosemary and olive herb are all so wonderful especially they were baked together in this combination...

Desiree potatoes are pink-coloured potatoes. Their skin is very thin and doesn't need any peeling. I like eating desiree potatoes when they roasted with their skin on.

Fleur de sel, also known as flower of salt in French contains more mineral complexity than table salt. I like to use Fleur de sel for this bake; although soft, this salt topping stays on my bread very well, look like little "snow flakes" on my bread. Due to its soft and moist texture, the fleur de sel on this loaf doesn't has the typical coarse sea salt crunch at all and its saltiness would simply melt into my mouth.

I'm always very proud of my homegrown herbs and think our rosemary and olive herb plants are always fabulous... Olive herb is an interesting herb to use for cooking and baking. It is a hardy perennial with bright green leaves that have an intense olive flavours.

... these are simply the reasons that I love baking this bread. With or without breadmaker, the bread seems not difficult at all to bake and yet so soft and flavoursome to eat.

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After running and baking so much lately, I'm actually feeling quite tired and all I want now is a holiday... My family and I will be having a short break in Singapore and Shanghai for the next coming 3 weeks and hope that our "guardian" mother hen can watched our plants well when we are gone. I hope to return soon with lots of running, cooking and baking. See ya.

Rosemary and Potato Bread

The beautiful ingredients that I used to make this bread

My son reckons that this "mother hen" is me... LOL!

Making the bread

This is so soft and flavoursome to eat...

What more can I say?

Here's the recipe from Taste.com.au 
(with my modification in blue)

600g (4 cups) plain flour, sifted
(I used a combination of 500g bread flour and 100g Italian OO flour) 
1 tbsp (14g/2 sachets) dried yeast
2 tsp salt
2 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
310ml (1 1/4 cups) warm water
5 tbsp olive oil 
(I used 3 tbsp for the bread dough and 2 tbsp for coating the potatoes)
Olive oil, to grease
2 medium desiree or pontiac potatoes, unpeeled
10 x 3cm-long fresh rosemary sprigs
(I used a mixture of fresh rosemary and fresh olive herbs)
2 tsp sea salt flakes 
(I used fleur de sel)

Place the flour, yeast, salt and rosemary in a large bowl and mix well. Make a well in the centre of the mixture. Combine the water and 3 tbsp of the oil and add to the dry ingredients. Use a wooden spoon to stir until combined, then use your hands to bring the dough together.

Turn the dough onto a lightly oiled surface and knead in 1 tbsp of remaining oil. Knead for 10 min or until smooth and elastic. Brush a large bowl with oil to grease. Place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a clean tea towel and place in a warm, draught-free place to prove for 45 min or until the dough doubles in size. (Instead of kneading by hand, I've placed all my ingredients into my bread-maker and use "dough" setting to knead and prove the dough for 1 hr). 

Preheat oven to 220°C (or 200°C fan forced). Without knocking back (deflating) the dough, place in a 15 x 27cm (base measurement) non-stick loaf pan (mine is 15 x 26 cm).

Cut the potatoes, crossways, into thin slices and place in a large bowl. Drizzle with the remaining oil and toss to coat. Use a small, sharp knife to cut 20 evenly spaced slits, about 2cm deep and 2cm long, in the top of the dough. Insert 1 slice of potato in each and insert a rosemary sprig in the dough between the potato slices. Cover with a tea towel and place in a warm, draught-free place to prove for 1 hr or until the dough doubles in size again. 

Sprinkle the top of the dough with sea salt and bake in a preheated oven for 40 mins or until light brown and hollow-sounding when tapped on the base. Remove from oven, turn onto a wire rack and set aside for 10 min to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: Mine was baked for 20 min at 200°C fan forced and another 20 min at 180°C fan forced.

Happy Baking

My Less Guilty Dark Chocolate Panna Cotta

If you like chocolate in the form of puddings, this nice and easy panna cotta recipe might be the right one for you...

My son and I made this panna cotta several times and always like to make these in this less guilty version. We have replaced cream with evaporated milk and yet they are still creamy enough for us to enjoy. Overall, they are rich in its chocolate taste but not too heavy at all to eat.

I'm submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #24 (October 2012): Jellies & Puddings hosted by Charmaine of MiMi Bakery House and hope that you will like this recipe.

Our less guilty dark chocolate panna cotta... so simple and delicious!

How we made our chocolate panna cotta

See how smooth and light the texture is... Yum!

Here's the recipe from Donna Hay Magazine Issue 63 Winter 2012.

(with my modification in blue)

1/4 cup (60ml) water (replaced with extra evaporated milk)
2 tsp gelatine powder (replaced with 3 gelatine leaves, about 12g in total)
3 cups (750ml) single (pouring) cream (replaced with evaporated milk)
1 cup (160g) icing sugar, sifted (reduced to 100g)
200g 70% cocoa chocolate, chopped

fresh raspberries, to serve (or strawberries)

Place the water in a bowl, sprinkle over the gelatine and set aside until the gelatine is dissolved. (For gelatine leaves, they need to be pre-soaked in water. Excess water is removed from them by gently squeezing them before addition.) 

Place the cream, sugar and chocolate in a saucepan over high heat and cook, whisking, for 8-10 min or until mixture comes to the boil. Remove from the heat, add the gelatine and stir until melted and smooth. Strain into 8 x 1/2 cup-capacity (125ml) lightly greased moulds or glasses. 

Refrigerate for 4 hours or until firm. Serve the chilled panna cottas with raspberries (or strawberries). Makes 8.

Note: Using half amount of this recipe, I have made 3 glasses of panna cotta for 3 hungry tumnmies to enjoy. Cheers!

Enjoy the treat.

Danish Chocolate Streusel-swirled Coffee Cake

Is this a cake? Err... maybe not. I'm not too sure of the definition of coffee cakes but personally, I think that this doesn't seems to be a cake to me at all.

I'm baking these Chocolate Danish bread for The Home Bakers and this is the tenth bake for this event. THB is an baking event organised by my friend, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours. With a group of gorgeous ladies, we are baking all recipes from the book, "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas until every recipe has been baked from this book.

I'm not too sure why Lou named this bread as a coffee cake. Or maybe this bread has to be named as a coffee cake so that the recipe can be included in her "Coffee Cakes" book... Seriously, I am happy that she did this because this recipe is really fantastic!

Being a health freak, I wasn't very happy at first seeing that I need to use 2 sticks of butter for this bake. And so, I have decided to use 1/3 of the recipe to bake this "cake" and baked them into individual Danish breads instead of one or two loaves. After baking, I'm now very satisfied and happy with all my bakes and can truly appreciate the "beauty" of this recipe.

Having a large proportion of butter, this brioche-like bread dough is more oily than most traditional bread dough. The clever part of this recipe that it has transform an buttery bread into a Danish pastry-like bread by using the chocolate streusel to form swirls and layers inside the dough. With these layers of chocolate, these breads taste like Danish pastries... Very delicious!

Now, is this a bread? or a Danish pastry? A bread that looks like a Danish pastry but contain less butter than a Danish pastry. Is this a beauty?

My Danish chocolate streusel-swirled BREAD... coffee cake? Nay!

The chocolate streusel filling for this bread

Shaping my bread

Happy with the shape of my bread :D

Before and after baking...

Love this beautiful bread texture... It tastes like a Danish pastry!

Being the rule of this event, only the host of the chosen bake can post the recipe in her blog post. Please visit Anuja from Simple Baking for the detailed recipe of this bake.

And, here are the notes and modifications that I made for my bake.

My ingredients list (which is 1/3 amount of the original recipe)

"Cake" Dough
1 tsp dry yeast

100 ml water

20g sugar

60g butter

a pinch of salt

2/3 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

225g bread flour + 1 tbsp bread flour

1 tbsp milk powder

Chocolate Streusel

40g sugar

12g all purpose flour

30g butter
(increased from 15g to 30g for a less crumbly streusel)

1 tbsp cocoa powder

1/3 tsp ground cinnamon

Egg wash

1 egg yolk

2 tbsp milk

Using this amount of ingredients of the above recipe, I've baked 6 swirl breads at 190°C fan forced for 20 min.

Modifications that I have made from the original:

• To make bread dough, I've placed all my ingredients into my bread-maker and use "dough" setting to knead and prove the dough for 1 hr in the bread-maker.
• I have used bread flour instead of all purpose flour to make the dough.
• I have replaced the milk into to the dough with the same volume of water and 1 tbsp milk powder.
• I have increased the amount of cocoa powder in the streusel from 2/3 tbsp to 1 tbsp.
• Instead shaping the bread into a large loaf, I have adapted the bread shaping technique from the book, The Second book of Baking for Beginner by Carol (in Chinese language) to make my bread into 6 individual swirl breads. Although I was lousy with my Chinese language and got lost in translation in my previous post with this book. LOL! Luckily, this shaping technique is easy to follow as there is no translation involved. LOL- again!
• Instead of using egg white and sliced almond to glaze and top the bread before baking, mine were brushed with my version of egg wash.

Happy Baking

World's Quickest Yeasted Coffee Cake

I really feel like a fairy godmother baking this coffee cake... This recipe is simply magic! Instead of proving the yeasted dough, this cake is placed in a cold oven and rises as the oven heats up. All I need is just 25 minutes of the baking time!

Great that Joyce from Kitchen Flavours has suggested baking this cake for our 34th Bake-along. This is indeed a very interesting cake to bake! When I baked my cake, I reckon that its syrup topping would be a little too sweet for me and so I reduced the amount of brown sugar by half. Interestingly, Lena from Frozen wings mentioned to us that the original recipe is little too sweet for her too. So, if you have a less sweeter tooth, you might wish to consider reducing the amount of sugar in your cake...

As described by the author of this recipe, this cake is best served warm from the oven. When the cake was freshly baked, the super delicious and crunchy toffee-flavoured nut topping is the thing I like the most in this cake.

Although everything seems so good, the only drawback is the cake is only nice to eat when it is freshly baked. As described in the book, the cake can be reheat in a oven for 5 min before consumption but I would prefer to finish all within a day.

Making my cake with my magic wands

Preparing the yeast for dough mixing

Making the cake dough and syrup topping

Assembling the cake

Baking the cake

This is amazing! The cake dough rise without any proving!

The topping is the most delicious part of the cake.

Here are the recipe from the book, Cake Keeper Cakes by Lauren Chattman

(with my notes and modification in blue)

3/4 cup whole milk
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 envelopes (1 1/2 tbsp) instant yeast
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 cup dark corn syrup (replaced with golden syrup)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar (reduced to 30g for half amount)
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans (I used walnuts, roughly chopped)

Grease an 8-inch square baking pan and dust it with flour, knocking out any extra.

Heat the milk and 2 tbsp butter in a small saucepan until the butter is melted and the milk is very warm to the touch. Pour into a large mixing bowl and whisk in the yeast to dissolve. Stir in the flour and salt and beat with an electric mixer on medium-low speed until you have a sticky dough. Press the dough into the prepared pan.

Combine the granulated sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the batter.

Melt the remaining 2 tbsp of butter. Combine the corn syrup (golden syrup), brown sugar, and melted butter in a medium bowl and stir. Spread over the dough. Sprinkle pecans (walnuts) evenly across the top.

Place the pan in a cold oven. Turn the heat to 350°F. Bake until the cake is golden and set in the center, 25 to 30 min. Let cool slightly and serve warm.

Note:
Using half of the recipe, I have baked my cake in 10 cm x 20 cm loaf pan at 160°C fan forced for 25 min.

Happy Baking

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To all curious bakers, there is something interesting that you wish to know about this bake. For the fun of this bake, I have actually made my cake dough using the full amount of this recipe. I've divided the dough into two portions and baked one portion all according to the above recipe and decided to "play" with the other portion.

For the "play" portion of my dough, I've proved it for 1 hr and then further divided them into 3 portions. I shaped and rolled each portion into bread roll and placed them all into a 10 cm x 20 cm and proved them again like what I would normally do for bread baking... And guess what? I waited, waited and waited... Finally, the size of the dough became double after 3 hrs! And when I baked these dough, they became tough! ... just like rubbery stones!

Amazingly, this recipe can't work without the sugary toppings and nuts. All I can say is this is simply MAGIC! Hey! Can someone pass me my fairy wings? I'm really a "fairy godmother" baking these...

These rubbery stones were tossed into my waste bin like basketballs :D

Here are our baking friends that have joined us for this bake-along. Please visit their blogs for more of their World's Quickest Yeasted Coffee Cake baking.

Please submit your details if you wish to link your post with this bake-along. This linking tool is open from 8 Oct to 14 Oct 2012.

For our next bake-along, we are baking Linzer tart which is to be posted on 12 Nov 2012. Please bake-along with us! All you need to do is to bake your favourite Linzer tart and blog hop with us on this day or within the next 7 days.
 
To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code
 
Before using this linky tool, please make sure that: (1) Your post must be a current post. (2) Please mention Bake-Along in your post and link back to any of our hosts' Bake-Along post, (Joyce, Lena or Zoe). (3) Appreciate if you can display the Bake-Along badge in your post when linking up with us. Cheers!

Is this a naan bread or an owl pizza?

You are absolutely right if you think that this is either a naan bread or an owl pizza.

I have never make a naan bread before and making it into an owl pizza seems to be an fun way to eat a naan bread.

I got this Halloween pizza idea from Sue at Munchin Munchies. Sue is super creative in her baking and I adore the way how she dressed up plain naan breads into stunning-looking Halloween pizza. So, here I am, making naan breads from scratch and dressing them up into cute owl pizzas, just like "killing two birds with one stone" ...

This wholemeal naan breads are absolutely fabulous with their soft chewy bites and great nutty flavour and we were all very happy eating these cheerful-looking pizzas.

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Before showing pictures and recipe of this pizza, here's an Cook like a Star announcement.

With lots of brainstorming, we have nominated the following list of chefs and co-hostess for the forthcoming months for Cook like a Star (2013). This will also be on the side bar of my blog for your quick referrer of the event schedule.

Dec 2012 : Martha Stewart
(Host by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Riceball from Riceball Eats)

March 2013: Delia Smith
(Host by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Mich from Piece of Cake)

May 2013: Nigella Lawson
(Host by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Anuja from Simple Baking)

July 2013: Curtis Stone
(Host by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Joyce from Kitchen Flavours)

September 2013: Ree Drummond
(Host by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Mich from Piece of Cake and Joyce from Kitchen Flavours)

Nov 2013: Bill Granger
(Host by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Mich from Piece of Cake)

Is this a naan bread or an owl pizza?

Making the naan breads

A small pinch of the bread...love the soft and nutty texture!

Here's the naan recipe from the King Arthur Flour.
(with my modification in blue)

2 cups King Arthur 100% White Wheat or Traditional Whole Wheat Flour
(I used plain wholemeal flour)
1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
(I used a combination of bread flour and Italian OO flour in the ratio of 1:4)
2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp (1 ounce) butter or ghee, melted (I used butter)
1/2 cup (4 ounces) milk or whey (from the drained yogurt) (I used milk)
3/4 cup (6 ounces) plain whole-milk yogurt
1 large egg

Whisk all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In a small bowl, lightly whisk together the butter or ghee, milk or whey, yogurt, and egg. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring to form a shaggy mass of dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it until it's smooth and shiny. Put the dough into a greased bowl, cover, and set it aside to rise for about 1 1/2 hrs, or until it's doubled in bulk. (Instead of kneading by hand, I've placed all my ingredients into my bread-maker and use "dough" setting to knead and prove the dough for 1 hr). At this point, the dough may be refrigerated, covered, for up to 24 hrs, for extra flavor and ease of rolling.

Divide the dough into six pieces, and hand-stretch or roll each piece into a thin oval shape. Pull on the front edge of the oval to elongate and create the tear shape. Let the pieces rest, uncovered, while you heat a griddle on high heat. Transfer the naan to the griddle. Grill for approximately 2 to 3 min on one side, until the bread puffs and begins to look set around the edges. Flip over and finish cooking.

Note: Using this recipe, I've made 4 of 21 cm x 28 cm (8 1/2 inches x 11 inches) naan breads and bake each side of the bread for 3 min at 200°C (fan forced with top grill).

Here's the owl pizza recipe from Munchin Munchies.
(with my modification in blue)

For 1 pizza:

1/2 cup pizza sauce (replaced with tomato pesto)
1 naan or other flatbread (8 1/2 inches x 11 inches)
1/2 cup shredded Italian six-cheese blend (replaced with tasty cheese)
2 slices onion (eyes) (replaced 2 thinly slices of hard boiled egg)
12 slices pepperoni (wings and eyes) (I used just 10 slices)
2 black olives, sliced (eyes) (replaced with 2 green peas)
red bell pepper (beak)
green bell pepper (eyes) (I didn't use this)
yellow bell pepper (ears)

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Spread pizza sauce (or pesto) over naan, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Sprinkle with cheese in the shape of an owl. Use 5 (or 4) slices of pepperoni per wing, placing pepperoni on each side of body, slightly overlapping slices. For the eyes, place onion ring slices (hard boiled egg slices) on face.  Place a pepperoni slice on the center of each onion slice (egg slice).  Top each with half (open end) an olive (or a pea), placing a small piece of green bell pepper in the center of each olive (I didn't do that). Cut 1 triangle from the red bell pepper for the beak, and 2 triangles from the yellow bell pepper for the "ears".  Bake at 375°F (or 180°C fan forced) for 8-10 mins (on pizza stone or baking sheet), or until heated and cheese melts. For a crisper pizza, bake 12-15 min.

Happy Baking

Chicken and Eggplant Gozlemes

We love tasting interesting food from different cultures... And this is one of the reasons why I love cooking for Cook like a Star blog hop events. I'm happy that I've learned a lot from the recent Cook like a Star with MasterChef theme and enjoyed a lot hosting this event with Anuja from Simple Baking and Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out. For this event, we have a total of 60 entries and black banana ice cream and perfect poached eggs are the most popular recipes amongst all.

To Anuja, Baby Sumo and all participating cooks: Thanks ladies! You rocks!

Talking about Masterchef and interesting food cultures, I always remember this episode of Australian Masterchef showing Amina (a contestant) cooking gozelemes for Hobart market challenge. Watching how the judges enjoying her gozelemes makes me feel like I wanna try some too.

Ironically, we have not tasted any Turkish made gozleme before! All freshly cooked gozelemes seems to be "hot property" at all time and there is always long queues waiting to buy and taste these delicious-smelling pastries. We never have the time and patience to be part of these extremely long queues and that's why we never get to taste any Turkish made gozelemes even until today.

"Why not I cook gozleme for you?" My husband gave me an instant skeptical eye when I said this to him... I have never cook gozelemes before and don't have friends that can give me any cooking advices. I guess the best way for me to cook this is to test and try several recipes that I can find from my food magazines and internet.

Of all the recipes that I have found, I had tried two kinds of gozeleme pastry recipes, one contains yeast as its raising agent (from Taste.com) and the other one is the instant kind which uses self raising flour (from Australian GoodFood magazine, June 2012). The yeasted pastry is a wet and sticky dough which is quite difficult to knead and handle but the cooked pastry turned out to thin, crispy and amazing good! In contrast, the self-raising pastry is easy to prepare but difficult to roll out into thin layers and eventually turned out to be a doughy flop.

Using this gozeleme recipe, I have cooked my gozelemes with two kinds of fillings, the chicken or the beef versions. My husband and son were happy eating all gozelemes when they were freshly cooked from my kitchen and they like both the chicken and beef versions. After the meal had finished, I was laughing at my husband because he was still feeling skeptical with me cooking nice gozelemes. Nevertheless, I must admit that the credit should go to this gozeleme recipe because this is really a good one.
 

My Chicken and Eggplant Gozlemes

Cooking the chicken fillings

Two kinds of fillings that I cooked - chicken and beef

Making and cooking the gozlemes

The two different pastries that I have tried

Here is the recipe mostly adapted from Taste.com

(with my notes in blue in order to cook two different kinds of fillings)

Make 4 large gozelemes (serve 6)

Dough

1 1/4 cups warm water
7g sachet dried yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
2 3/4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Filling

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 small eggplant, cut into 1cm cubes
1/2 small brown onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
400g lean beef mince
(replaced with 200g lean beef mince and 200g chicken thigh mince, separated)
100g baby spinach
1 tsp dried chilli flakes 

(I didn't add this for my non-adult gozeleme consumer)
100g feta, crumbled
2 tsp lemon juice

Method

Combine warm water, yeast and sugar in a jug. Whisk to dissolve yeast. Stand in a warm place for 10 minutes or until frothy.

Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Add yeast mixture and 1 tbsp olive oil. Mix to form a soft dough. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 5 min or until elastic. Place in a lightly greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and stand in a warm place for 30 min or until dough doubles in size. (I have used breadmaker to knead the dough which is quite sticky to handle.)

Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add eggplant. Cook, stirring, for 6 to 7 min or until eggplant is tender. Drain on paper towel. Add onion and garlic to pan. Cook, stirring, for 3 min or until onion has softened (I removed half of the onion mixture). Add mince (chicken). Cook, stirring, for 6 to 8 min or until browned. Add (half amount of) spinach, chilli (I add this later) and (half amount of) reserved eggplant. Cook, stirring, for 2 min or until spinach has wilted and mince is cooked. Remove from heat. Stir through (half amount of) feta and lemon juice. Repeat the same step to cook the beef filling.

Divide dough into 4 equal portions. Roll 1 piece into a 32cm x 20cm rectangle. Place a quarter of the eggplant mixture over one half of rectangle. (I sprinkled some chili flakes onto the adult-consuming gozeleme at this stage) Brush opposite edge with water. Fold dough over to enclose filling. Press edges together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough and eggplant.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Brush one side of each gozleme with 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Cook for 3 min or until base is golden. Brush uncooked side using remaining oil. Turn over. Cook for 3 min or until golden and crisp. Transfer to a board. Cut each gozleme into 8 slices. Serve.

The gozeleme dough recipe that uses self raising flour has not worked well for me but it had worked very well for Guru Uru from Go Bake Yourself and so the recipe adapted from Australian GoodFood June 2012 is not provided in this post.

Happy Cooking