Chocolate Braided Bread

I made this bread from the remaining of the eggless donuts dough that I tried and yet failed again. Instead of throwing them away, I hoped that it would be nicer to be baked as bread. And exactly true, the dough makes a good bread even though it does not contain any eggs. The water roux has acted as natural bread improver that creates soft texture bread.

So here we go, full recipe as seen on this post:

Divide the dough into two equal portions.

Add 1 tablespoon of sifted cocoa powder to one half and knead to mix well.

Flatten the white dough portion to a somewhat rectangular shape, try to match the length of your baking pan. Smother generously with chocolate spread (can be substituted with peanut butter or even water, lightly brushed) on the surface of the flatten white dough leaving about 1 cm of each sides. I made mistake by spreading it all the way through and made a massive chocolate mess when rolled the bread later.

Flatten the chocolate dough to about the same size as the white dough and lay on top of the chocolate spread.

Roll up the bread dough into an oblong shape, secure both ends.

Flatten the bread roll a little bit and cut into three portions, but not all the way through, leave about 2 cm of one end uncut. Braid the dough and place in a baking pan.

Let it rest for 15 minutes and bake on preheated oven at 180C until it is thoroughly cooked. (Mine took about 20 minutes)

Brush the bread with butter while it is still hot to have that glossy look 🙂

braided bread
Note that I used Kraft Chocolate Hazelnut spread this time, trying out new brand. Hubby still prefers the good old Nutella, so will definitely go back to our trusted brand again 🙂

 

 

 

Eggless Donut with Water Roux [Failed?]

Up till today I have tried making donuts about four or five times and from all those experiments, it was only once that I am quite happy with, which was the no knead donuts. All the other experiments have pretty much failed, too hard, not cooked through with burnt skin, the donuts cracked when fried hence soggy with oil, and all other failures you can associate with donuts making. I have tried the basic donuts recipe to ones with mashed potatoes, which supposedly creates donuts with softer texture that lasts to the next day; none of them really worked for me for some reasons. The fact that I have tried many times and almost every time was a failure was really discouraging to even re-attempting again, but at the same time it intrigues my inner curiosity 😛 So here we go, another attempt on donut making.

I was just browsing through my Facebook updates and noticed a friend who shared a post on eggless donut recipe. The pictures of that soft pillowy looking donuts then prompted me to click on the post and there it was a not so detailed recipe. Since it has startled my curiosity, there was just no way I would stop there. Upon googling the recipe, I found this post that was very helpful and decided to give it a try, hoping that my donuts curse will be lifted 😀

Here are the ingredients:

  • Water roux: 25 grams bread flour + 125 ml water
  • 200 grams bread flour
  • 50 grams all purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of milk powder
  • 1 tablespoon of instant yeast
  • 1 teaspoon of sugar
  • 50 ml lukewarm water
  • 50 grams of butter
  • 3 – 5 tablespoons of lukewarm water (only if the dough was too dry)

Cook the water roux until it became sticky paste, cover with cling wrap directly on the surface of the water roux. Set aside to room temperature.

On a glass, mix the 50 ml lukewarm water with yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar. Stir and set aside for about 10-15 minutes until it is foamy.

On a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and milk powder together. Then add in the cooled water roux and the foamy yeast mixture. Knead the dough until it form a ball, add more water if it is too dry and vice versa flour if it is too wet. I ended up adding extra 2 tablespoons of water to the dough. Then add butter, knead again until elastic.

Set aside the dough for proofing for about 45 minutes until the dough is double in size.

Shape little balls on donuts and place on the floured baking pan and let them rest for about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat up pan with plenty of cooking oil for deep frying with low heat. Poke a hole in the middle of each donuts just before dropping them for deep frying. Turn them over once the other side is golden. Don’t rush the deep frying process by cranking up the heat to ensure the donuts are thoroughly cooked and not burnt on the outside.

So, turned out my donuts cursed is not lifted yet. There must be something wrong with the way I cooked them, they are soaked with oil, again! The texture itself is pretty soft and would have been enjoyable if not soaking with oil. Phew maybe I should just not attempt on making donuts again, ever. I am sure there is nothing wrong with the recipe, as many have testified its results are wonderful. So dear readers, if you do give it a go, please let me know how yours turn out 🙂

eggless donut2

Bear Wannabe (ᵔᴥᵔ) Pull Apart Bread

In the recent months, there have been so many videos on pull apart bread in Youtube. And the way it shows, it seems really easy to decorate those bread with animal or cartoon character faces – there is bear, cat, Winnie the pooh, keroppi, and many more. It looks so cute and fun for everyone to enjoy.

Thinking that it would be as easy as those videos show, I had my first attempt on making bear version. It turned out not so easy and simple at all. Decorating is difficult! Or maybe it is just me not having much of art talent at all that finds it so challenging. And to make those ears stick in the right place is not easy, as they expand, they will just glide off from its original intended location. The combination of bad shapes and terrible chocolate decorating result in bear wannabe instead of cute bears (ᵔᴥᵔ)

I use the Kitchen Aid mixer to do the mixing and kneading for this bread, and it did a great job. I don’t need to manually knead the dough at all. But, we all agree that the tangzhong version is so so much better. This recipe results in a soft bread while it is warm only, then it will get harder and dryer as it gets cold. The trick would be to warm it up on the microwave for few seconds, but even so, it will not be as fluffy as the tangzhong version. Anyway, this is the bread recipe I used on this batch:

  • 250 bread flour
  • Mix together and set aside: 1 teaspoon yeast + 1 teaspoon sugar + 150 ml warm milk
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 30 gram butter at room temperature
  • Filling: anything to your liking (chocolate rices, choc chips, cheese, etc)

Add all the ingredients, except butter in mixing bowl.

Using dough hook to mix all ingredients until it forms a ball then add in the butter. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Let is rest for about 1 hour in a warm place until it doubles in size.

Divide the dough into 9 equal portions. For each portion, take out a small part to shape as the ears. Flatten the dough, fill with your preferred filling, close and shape as a ball, place in a square baking pan of 20 x 20 cm. Make a 2 small balls for the ears and attach to the top sides of the big ball. Continue for the rest of the dough portions.

Let the dough rest again for about 30 minutes.

Gently brush the top of the bread rolls with egg wash then bake in preheated oven at 180C for about 20 minutes.

Once it is cooked, take out of oven and spread with butter generously on the surface and side of the bread.

Enjoy while it is warm! 😀

pull apart bread
Badly shaped bears (~_^)

 

 

Milk Bread Loaf with Peanut Butter&Choco

Courtesy of hubby, we welcome a new “toy” in our kitchen last week, a kitchen aid mixer. It was a highlight of 2016 so far, apart from me getting older 🙂 I love making and eating bread, and I have shared few recipes that worked for me over few posts here. So, of course we made bread using the tangzhong method that is well-known to produce milky soft bread. Previously, I kneaded the dough by hands and it took a while to achieve the smooth elastic consistency mainly because the recipe calls for slightly more liquid ingredient (in this case, milk) than other bread recipes which makes the dough very sticky. But, the end result really pays off those hard work and it is incredibly satisfying when your house smells like bakery ლ(´ڡ`ლ) The milk bread recipe is very versatile, you can bake it plain or with filling.  And this time, we made the milk bread loaf with peanut butter and chocolate rices – delicious!

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Garuda Indonesia – Business Class (SYD-DPS-SYD)

First of all, please do not take this post as me trying to show off or bragging or anything, I just wanted to share our honest opinions and experiences on our flight in business class with Garuda Indonesia. Although we have pretty much always flown with Garuda Indonesia whenever we went back to Indonesia or within Indonesia domestically, this is the very first time we flew on Business Class ticket. It started with a promotion and one thing led to another, hubby suggested that we tried this, maybe even for once in a life time hehehe

I think we paid about almost half the normal cost with the promotion, so that really was great saving. But at the same time also made it affordable to us, because without the promotion I really doubted we would have gone for these tickets! By the way, the luggage allowance for each business class ticket is 40 kg; it is usually 30 kg for economy class ticket.

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