Coming soon....adventures in Baking

in Foodies Bee Hive16 days ago (edited)

Sorry. I blew it again. Hit 'post' instead of 'save draft', hence an introduction placeholder post with just a couple of pictures!

I finally got my oven sorted and kitchen almost finished and being the impatient sort, ordered loads of ingredients and cookware from a baker supply shop in Chiang Mai and have been attempting to create the perfect bread roll recipe. Yes, I'm calling them bread rolls but you can call them what you will! In the UK, the list of terms for this simple 'lump' of baked dough is endless depending on your location. Bread cakes, tea cakes, rolls, baps, buns, stotties, balm cakes, the list goes on and on!

In it's basic form, making bread is simple. It takes just a few ingredients but to make bread well, you need a certain level of understanding of how the process works. There is a lot of chemistry involved! The base ingredients are flour, yeast and a fat.

The shop in Chiang Mai carries 26 different brands of bread flour from all over the world. I settled on this unbleached, South Korean Brand with a protein level of 13.3%. The more protein, the more gluten that's created which gives bread its doughy, chewy texture. The quantities of ingredients can be altered slightly to create a finished product to suit an individual's personal taste. In my case, I took a recipe for traditional Scottish morning rolls and made a few slightly varying batches until I was happy.

As for the yeast, I have settled on a French brand, SAF which is widely available here in the hope that it may help me bake better baguettes, that's currently a work in progress but I'm getting there.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Hope I've just about covered my error with a brief introduction and the full post, technique, ingredients and instructions will follow shortly. Apologies again to the @foodiesbeehive, I'll hopefully make up for it in a couple of days with a post worthy of your fine community :-)

Thank-you

Martin

@nathen007

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Your buns look good! How many pounds of flour is that, and what would the cost be in USD?

Hi, good morning. Thank you :-)

In Pounds....err 500g would be 1.1lbs and as I always use butter instead of shortening, lard or margarine, and I use imported flour, it makes it a little more expensive but I think the whole batch would work out at 70baht which is about $2. Not sure if that's cheap or not. I'll try and do a full cost breakdown when I finish the full post :-)

Looks awesome. I ask a bit of a baker myself so can't wait to see more! I like making the odd Scottish morning roll. Much better than other soft nonsense.

I've used that saf stuff too for baguettes. I think it also is good added in part to loaves!

That's great! Check out the previous edit of the post and you'll find 20 pictures from start to finish with no text!
I actually had to rush and get them out of the oven as I'd got a class so didn't get much crunch...
Do you put a tray of water in the oven to get a crunchy crust?

Lol, you and your premature posting!!

I do indeed. In fact I have been doing it so long that my oven is a bit rusty inside! I also cook a good bit longer than any recipe says to get that well fired dark brown crunchy loveliness!

ohh so you've even ventured to baking now 😮 that's an interesting hobby. A pretty nice potential hobby at that. Did the rolls taste good?

Delicious, after I'd made 6 batches over the past few weeks to get them just the way I like them. I still managed to undercook these slightly though as I was rushing to get to a tutoring session!

undercooked dough doesn't sound so appealing 🤣🤣 but if you say it's delicious, I'll take your word for it 🤣

Those rolls look legit! I attempted breadmaking not just once but twice and failed to meet even my own expectation! 😅 I figured kneading isn't really for me. I find it tedious considering my small space at home. Not planning to give breadmaking another try but perhaps I might get a thing or two here and in your future posts. I'll stay tuned!

@nathen007, I paid out 0.353 HIVE and 0.085 HBD to reward 3 comments in this discussion thread.