bread Archives - The Wifey's Corner

November 19, 2017June 30, 2023

Simple French Toast

What are you doing to that few slices of bread left on the fridge? There are few ways that I can think of right now, such as making croutons, bread butter pudding, filled with ragout – crumbed and deep fried for delicious savory snacks. But we can also make french toast, which is easy and take no longer than 30 minutes. And that is what we had for breakfast yesterday morning 🙂

Anyway, this is how I prepared my french toast:

6 slices of sandwich bread
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
dash of vanilla extract
half teaspoon of ground cinnamon
butter

Combine all ingredients (except bread and butter) in a shallow dish, whisk well.

Melt some generous amount of butter on your frying pan. Meanwhile, dip the bread on the egg mixture and place it to the pan. Just note that if you leave the bread dipping in the mixture for too long, it will absorb more liquid hence longer cooking time.

Cook each side until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes.

It is best to serve immediately, or keep in the warm oven until you finish cooking all.

If I have double cream at home, I would use half double cream and half milk for the egg mixture. It will add more richness to the french toast. But, I have also known some people use mix of nuts milk and they come out as tasty as using regular milk. This recipe is definitely a versatile one where you can adjust it according to what’s in your pantry.

Of course, how you serve the french toast is really up to your liking. We love it with drizzle of maple syrup, or chocolate syrup and fresh fruits. Some have theirs with slices of bacon, absolutely any variations that make breakfast or brunch special. The one we had yesterday was only with dust of icing sugar and some chocolate syrup for hubby’s.

October 8, 2017

Platform Eighty Two, Concord West

Another cafe that we have often passed in these past couple of years and always have a big line outside. We even tried to go there before and got turned off because of the wait. But we made it there few weeks ago, went there before 10 am to avoid the brunch peak hours on Saturday.

Located in the heart of Concord West and very close to its train station, this little cafe often digs our curiosity. It seems they are serving big breakfast type of meals, pancakes and drinks. And yet, people always flock in here even after years it opened its door. A quick search on this place shows numerous pictures of huge platter of big breakfast on tiered settings. Almost like how they serve high tea, but instead of tiny elegant plates, they use a massive wooden board platters.

And of course we have to order the breakfast platter, here are the pictures of what we had:

The breakfast platter for 2, we upgraded the waffle to pancake with ice cream for an extra $2 per person

And the verdict…

We feel Platform Eighty Two is a little overrated in term of queuing. It is not exactly cheap brunch, but don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of food served for 2 people. Eggs are served in three ways (scrambled, sunny side up, and poached). Generous amount of button mushroom, bacon and salami. Love the avocado with feta cheese and hash browns 🙂 No regret on upgrading the dessert to pancake, very delicious! I feel this is a nice place for get together with few people, it is fun, and very instagram-able, right? But make sure to make a reservation ahead if you are coming in groups, just to be sure you will get a table with no long wait. Also, thumbs up for the coffee, very smooth!

Platform Eighty Two

82 Queen St, Concord West NSW 2138

Phone: (02) 9743 0002

Facebook page

May 19, 2017February 1, 2018

Milk Jam

Milk jam is something I became aware of from a little shop in Ubud, Bali. I have never heard or even know of its existence until I stumbled upon Kou. Kou is a shop in Ubud that sells handmade soaps and jams – owned by a Japanese lady who married to Balinese man. The fact is Kou also inspired me to start making my own soap bars, which I still find satisfaction in doing so today. Anyway, one morning many years later I suddenly woke up with much curiosity of milk jam. So of course the first sensible step is look it up on Google 🙂

Milk jam search came up with so many results, but I think I like this one best. I have tried making the vanilla and earl grey tea versions, both are delicious. As you can see from the recipe below, you could play with so many flavours to add to the base recipe. I think it will taste lovely with matcha flavour, or pandan, I shall try these in next time 🙂 And also due to how slim that ingredients list, I’d suggest to use good quality vanilla extract, earl grey or any other additions so these flavours will really carry through the cooking time.

Base Milk Jam

200 ml thickened cream
250 ml milk (I used light milk as that was we have in the fridge and it turned out fine)
80 grams sugar (I used 70 grams)

Vanilla Flavour – add to base recipe

half vanilla pod

Early Grey Tea Flavour – steep for about 5 minutes then add to base recipe

20 grams earl grey tea leaves
80 ml hot water

Combine everything in a pot and cook with low heat.

Stir with a wooden spoon frequently to avoid any burned milk on the bottom of the pan. Especially when the mixture is started to reach boiling point and thicken up (took me about 20 minutes for half batch), you will need to keep stirring continuously. Fear not, once it reached that stage, it is almost done anyway.

Once it’s texture is similar to soft caramel, transfer to a glass jar and as it cools down, it will thicken up even more.

Above pictures are taken when I made the earl grey flavour. Do you notice the colour changes? It will even more noticeable on the vanilla or plain version

Yummy with toast, crackers, even on ice cream. Apparently it stays soft even on top of the cold ice cream (according to the source blog)

January 15, 2017August 13, 2023

Bagelen

I haven’t seen any bagelen sold in Sydney, unless in some Indonesian grocery shops, so I guess it is one of Indonesian snack (do correct me if I am mistaken). Basically, bagelen is made up sweet bread bun, halved, spread with some butter cream icing, and baked until dry and crispy. The butter icing is what really makes this snack tasty, it is sweet and slight hint of salty and most of all is buttery. Combined with the crispy sweet bun, just makes it perfect snack to accompany coffee or tea. Some people dip the bagelen to their hot coffee or tea to soften it, but I prefer it crispy (っ˘ڡ˘ς)

To be honest, I am attempting this mainly because of leftovers from this bread. Because the bread texture is not soft and even more so the next day, so hopefully it will save them by turning to bagelen. And here is the ingredient for the butter cream icing (I only made half batch for 8 sweet buns):

50 grams sweetened condensed milk
125 grams icing sugar
250 grams margarine
250 grams butter (if unsalted, add a tiny pinch of salt)

Mix all the ingredients together until well combined.

To make bagelen, halve sweet buns and lay on baking pan. Preferably leave them overnight so that they are dry. Since I am doing it kind of at last minute, I refrigerate my halved buns for about 3 hours.

Spread the butter cream icing generously to surface of each sweet buns.

Bake them on 120C for 40-60 minutes until they are crispy. Make sure to use lower temperature to avoid burning the sweet butter cream.

Once cool to room temperature, store them in airtight container to keep the crisp for longer.

That nutella filling of the buns actually added more kick to the buttery bagelen

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos after baking. Hubby went after them too quickly! No, actually I had some as well and kept thinking I will take picture the next day when lighting is better, and never ended up doing it

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

January 10, 2017August 13, 2023

Mushroom (Look Alike) Bread

First post for 2017, yeayy!!! Anyway, I have been thinking of trying this out since I saw this post weeks before Christmas and of course it was December, too much eating out and not enough me time in the kitchen, hence the delay. The first thing that caught my eyes was the beautiful topping pattern, and they do remind me of dried shiitake mushroom, right? To make them look more alike to mushroom, I should have used muffin pan. But since I didn’t, the only thing that resembles mushroom is just the topping.

I followed the source recipe completely, and here it is again:

For the bread:

350 grams bread flour
50 grams sugar
50 grams butter
20 grams milk powder
1.5 teaspoon dry instant yeast
4 grams salt
1 whole egg
150 ml cold milk

Mix all ingredients except butter and salt, knead until elastic before adding the remaining ingredients. Knead until form a smooth and elastic dough. Set aside for proofing for about 1 hour or until double in size. Once it is double in size, punch the dough to remove trapped gas and shaped into little balls, add your favorite filling to each. Then place them in the baking pan. At this time, we brush the topping with the chocolate paste.

Brush the topping before second proofing (left) and the result after second proofing, look at those cracks (right)

For the topping:

2 teaspoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons rice flour
4 teaspoons water

Mix well the ingredients into a thick paste. Brush this chocolate paste to the topping of each bread. Leave the bread for second proofing until it almost double in size and cracks appear on each topping.

Bake them on 180C for about 15 minutes and enjoy!

These smell very chocolaty when taken out of oven

Note:

I personally think the bread is not that soft, so maybe next time if I do make this again, I will use the trusted tangzhong method. Also, I might have applied the paste too thick on each bun, they tasted a bit too bitter. I am thinking maybe I should add pinch of sugar to the topping paste next time. Not sure though whether it will change the texture or anything.

Apart from that, I really love how these breads look (｡◕‿◕｡)