No Knead Artisan Bread

Recently saw a few post Artisan bread. Google and found a recipe from The Italian Dish that looks easy without kneading require and done within 5 minutes.  Decided to give it a try. It is really easy and no hassle and save time.
Needed only 4 ingredients and it taste very good. What we need is just a big plastic container with a lid to allow the dough proof inside the container. According to this blogger dough can be kept in refrigerator for 14days.
Today, mix the flour that is plain flour with bread flour. Original recipe called for 100% plain/all purpose flour.
I will try the next round using just plain flour. Today I believe because of the bread flour, the dough was very sticky and make shaping the dough become very difficult. After few attempts trying to shape the dough as I used to shape, the dough stuck on my fingers. In the end I can only shape it into something round  and placed it on the parchment paper. The surface was not smooth. But the result after further proofing and after baking it was satisfying.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups lukewarm water
2 tsp instant yeast
2 tsp sea salt
3 1/4 cups unsifted, all purpose flour( i used 60% bread flour & 40% plain)

Method :
Prepare a big plastic container with lid. Pour in the water. Add instant yeast and salt. Use a spoon stir a few strokes to get the yeast well mixed.

Add all of the flour at once, measuring the flour by scooping it and leveling it off with a knife. Mix with a spoon - do not knead.  Mix until everything is uniformly moist, without dry patches.  This step is done in a matter of a few minutes.  The dough should be wet and loose. Do not over mixed. Less stiring the dough the softer the bread will be

Put on the lid but not airtight. You want the gases to be able to escape a little. I used a lock and lock container but did not tighten. Just leave the lid on top to cover the opening. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flattens on top), about two hours. Longer rising times will not hurt your dough. This dough can be kept in fridge for 14days According to the blogger, the longer it leave to proof the easier to handle the dough. Recommended first time making this should allow the dough proof overnight in the refrigerator so that it will be easier to shape. However, i let it proof in room temperature for 3hours and then shape.

Shape your loaf.  Place a piece of baking parchment paper on a aluminum baking sheet.    Sprinkle the surface of your dough in the container with flour.  Pull up the dough. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball as you go.  Dust your hands with flour if you need to.  This is just to prevent sticking - you don't want to incorporate the flour into the dough.  The top of the dough should be smooth - the object here is to create a "gluten cloak" or "surface tension".  It doesn't matter what the bottom looks like, but you need to have a smooth, tight top.  This whole step should take about 30 seconds!  Place the dough onto your parchment paper.

Let the loaf rise for about 30 - 40 minutes (it does not need to be covered).  If it doesn't look like it has risen much, don't worry - it will in the oven.  This is called "oven spring".

Preheat a baking tray on the middle rack in the oven for at least 20 minutes at 225°C. If you have a cast iron pot, use a cast iron pot. However, as i do not have it, so this is the part that I have modified.

Dust the loaf with a little flour and slash the top with a knife.  This slashing is necessary to release some of the trapped gas, which can deform your bread.  It also makes the top of your bread look pretty - you can slash the bread in a tic tac toe pattern, a cross, or just parallel slashes.  You need a very sharp knife or a razor blade - you don't want the blade to drag across the dough and pull it.  As the bread bakes, this area opens and is known as "the bloom". Remember to score(make a cut/slash the surface)the loaves right before baking.

Bring out the preheat baking tray and place the dough including the parchment paper onto the preheat tray. And return the tray into the oven and bake for 30-35minutes depend on the size of your dough. The blogger place a cup of water in the oven during the baking process to get a crispy crust. I omitted this process.

You may also want to try using no knead dough for buns. See my post No Knead Sandwich Buns

Toaster Oven Crispy Roasted Pork(Siew Yuk)

Have you cook your food in a toaster oven before?
I do it all the time. I do not own a microwave oven. So my toaster oven become very handly. I reheat food in it. I cook char siew in it. I bake chicken wings and chicken thighs and chicken chops  in my toaster oven. My neighbour was amazed when she saw me grilling the chicken wings and chicken chops in the toaster oven. So whenever I make small portion of otah, I will prefer to use toaster oven. Just set to the time
 that I want and go do my housekeeping and doesn't need to worry that kitchen get burn down. That is how I was able to cook simple meal with toaster oven and keep the house and coaching my children when my children were young. Toaster oven is my "good friend" in my kitchen. I use toaster oven to roast cashew nuts and almond if the quantity is small. I do have a big oven which I use for normal cake and bread baking and grills.
For small portion, I would prefer using toaster oven as it save energy and easy cleaning. So, my toaster oven is quite heavily utilised. Currently I am using a toaster oven with top and bottom grill function. And it has up to 60min timer. The only thing it doesn't has is the temperature setting. Once, the timer is set to the desire time, it will start to heat up and the heating up is very fast within a few seconds. Unlike those big oven which require preheat.

As I tried alot of different kind of food in the toaster oven, the only one i have not try is the crispy pork belly. Decided to give it a try..and I am very satisfied with the result. It was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Few years ago, have tried using my big oven to do this dish. The roast pork was nice, but was "horrified" by the cleaning...the whole oven was very dirty and oily after roasting the belly pork. Tried once and never want to try again. It took me a long time cleaning the oven and a few days to get rid of the smell.
Through the previous experience, this time using toaster oven, I did some "precaution" to minimise cleanning job. I wrapped the pork with aluminim foil before putting it into toaster oven.

This is a successful crispy roaster pork which is yummy and easy to make. Will do this more often from now on..

You may find me in facebook page Catherine's Cooking Journal

Ingredients :
Belly pork with skin on
Coarse sea salt

Marinate:
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp Five spies powder
1 tsp Shaoxin wine

Directions :
Boil a pot of water, blanch the pork belly in the boiling water for 1-2min.

Remove from water. Use kitchen paper towel to dry the pork belly

Place the pork belly skin down, rub the wine the all over the meat except the skin, that is the sides & the bottom of the meat.

Combine salt , pepper and five spices powder and rub all over the meat including the skin. No need to finish the amount of marinate seasoning. Just make sure every part is rub with this seasoning.

Turn over to have the pork belly skin up, poke the skin with a small knife sharp tip or any pricking tool you have. I used a special pins to do this job. Poke alot of time..the more the better. Leave the pork belly in a plate, do not cover and leave it in the fridge one day if you can. However, due to time constraint, I left it in fridge for 2hours. Purpose is to let the pork be dry to get the crispy effect.

Wrap the pork belly with a piece of aluminum foil & have the skin exposed,  then, cover the skin with a thick layer of coarse sea salt.

Place the pork belly with skin which is covered with coarse salt facing up laying on a baking tray.

Put the tray of pork belly into the toaster oven and  with setting top and bottom grill and set toaster oven timer to 60mins to "roast" the pork belly.

After 60min, remove from toaster oven. Remove the layer of coarse salt first then remove the aluminium foil. Careful there may be some hot liquid oil. Discard liquid or keep it to make sauce. Place the pork belly with skin facing up back into tray and return it into toaster oven again. Set toaster oven timer 30min. Let the pork belly continue to roast until the skin turn golden brown and crispy.

Remove from toaster oven. Cut and serve.

Note: my toaster oven temperature is approximate 220°C~250°C

You may like to try a different recipe using the belly pork to cook in different style Braised Pork / Kong Bak

Apple Cinnamon Scones

16Jul2015
Bought a scones recipe book for many years. It was left in my book shelf for many years and has yet try any of the recipe in it. Today I wanted to try making cinnamon with scones.  After searching through my recipes books, found this easy recipe. The result was very good. Most importantly the scones taste very yummy. Soft inside and a little crispy on the outside while it is hot.   After dinner, my husband took one and continue to take another 2 more.  He loved it. He complimented that it tasted very good. So, this is considered a good and easy recipe.

Ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour (250g)
30g butter
1/3 cup caster sugar(65g)
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 red apple -grated

Extra 1 tablespoon of milk for glazing

Method
Rub flour with butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar and cinnamon and apple.  Mix egg and milk and pour into the dry mixtures and make into a soft dough.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface, knead very gently (do not over knead) then roll out to a 2 cm thickness. Cut into 5cm rounds and place on a baking sheet. Brush with milk and bake in a preheat hot oven , traditional oven 220° C for 10 min -12min or when it is slight brown on the top. Cool on a wire rack.

Orange Butter Cake

 

Last CNY our relative made us a very nice orange cake. After tasted such good orange cake, I just want to bake one myself. She told me she took recipe from Google. So I did the same and after much searching I found this recipe from eatapieceofcake. The cake posted in the blog looks like the one my relative made. I mean the colour and texture. Therefore, I baked it! To my surprise, the result was very good and family loved it so much that we finished within few minutes.
Visit also my facebook page Catherine's Cooking Journal

Ingredients:
227gram/2 sticks butter – room temperature( I used 250g)
200 gram sugar (I used 170g)
220 gram flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
4 large eggs
Zest of an orange (I used the zest of 2 oranges)
5 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed)

Method
Grease and line an 8” round baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degree F (175 degree C).
Sieve flour, baking powder and salt and set it aside.
Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until mixture is light and fluffy.
Add in the orange zest.Slow down the mixer and slowly add in the flour. Finally stir in orange juice. Mix until well combined.
Turn out mixture into prepared tin. Level out mixture at the sides but allow a shallow well in the centre. This is to enable the cake to level up evenly during baking.
Bake for 50-55 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer.Ingredients:

You may like this too :
Orange Muffins

Pineapple Tarts (enclosed version)

Chinese New Year is around the corner...and everywhere in the supermarkets or bakery we are seeing cookies. I have a packet of cake flour, why not? Why not making some pineapple tarts. I usually use plain flour but this round thought trying cake flour and find out the result since this cake flour is sitting in my kitchen for a while. To my surprise the pastry was nice and soft and most important melt in the mouth. Isn't this what everyone is looking for - melt in mouth?   By the way, this is a trial and error session and amazingly the result was good! In the past years, I have been baking opened version using plain flour, that is, the one look like flower. I am happy with the result.


This is my melt in mouth enclosed pineapple :


Ingredients for pastry :
360g cake flour
50g milk powder
2 tbsp. corn flour
1/4 tsp sea salt (or any salt)
3 tbsp icing sugar (can increase to more ..that is to your desire)
2 tsp custard powder ( I add for the color purpose)
250g cold soft butter (I used salted)
4 egg yolks (I will reduce 1 eggyolk the next round)
1 tsp vanilla extract


1 eggyolk for eggwash


Pineapple Jam  :
4 pineapples ( I used Malaysia Honey pineapple - weigh about 750g/pc after skinned. total weight is 3000g pineapples)
3 cloves ( can add more if you like say to 6)
1 cinnamon stick
550g sugar


Making of Jam:
Grate the pineapple. I grate the pineapple by hand.  Put the grated pineapple including the juice(do not drain the juice), cloves and cinnamon stick into a wok and cook until it is almost dry. Stir frequently as you cook to prevent burn at the bottom. When it is almost dry, add sugar. Continue to cook and don't forget to keep stiring because at this stage the jam can be easily burnt because of sugar. Cook until the pineapple is completely dry. Off the fire. When it is cool, roll them into small balls. It is about 1/2 teaspoon per ball. Put the jam balls into a container and keep in fridge for future use. Mission Done.


P.S. : If you like your pineapple jam to be darker gold, then, add sugar earlier. But I prefer the normal golden color so I add sugar only when pineapple is almost dry.


Making of Pineapple tarts :
Put all the ingredients ( except eggyolk and vanilla extract ) into a big bowl. Rub the dry ingredients with butter using your fingertips till it resemble breadcrumb. Add eggyolk and vanilla extract. Continue to work into a soft dough.  Set a side for use.  You may keep in fridge if you are not using it immediately. You can keep up to 4 or 5 days. But I prefer to use it immediately to keep fresh.


Scoop 1 tsp of the pastry and wrap with the jam ball. Roll into a ball and place into small cupcake cup and place into a baking tray.


Eggwash the tarts with eggyolk (1 eggyolk plus 1 tbsp water)
Bake the  tarts in a pre-heat 180 degree celius oven for 15mins. After 15 min, bring out the tray of tarts and apply 2nd eggwash and continue to bake for another 5min.  Total baking time is 20min.

Hope you will find this recipe useful to you. Happy baking. :)

You may also like to view my other post:
1.pineapple-tarts (opened)

Butter Shortbread

My princess loves to eat shortbread. To cheer her up and also to give her  support and eencouragement for her prelim exam. I baked this shortbread. I have tried several different recipe from others' blog . JoyofBaking and Guai Shu Shu recipe are simple and easy to remember. Both using 3:2:1 ratio.One is weighing and the other is using cup. For this that I have baked, I have adopted the Guai Shu Shu's ingredients and incorporated with my own method.

Ingredients
100g icing sugar
200g soft salted butter
300g plain flour/all purpose flour
1tsp vanilla essence

Preheat traditional oven to 180 degrees C with the rack in the middle of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Method:
1.In the large bowl, combine flour , sift icing sugar , soft butter and vanilla. Mix everything together into a soft dough.

2.On a lightly floured surface or on a greaseproof paper, roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desire shapes using a lightly floured cookies cutter or a knife.  Place on the prepared baking sheets . Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until cookies are very lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.

Note dated 23/9/2014: preheat fan oven 170°C, bake 10-12min

Dated 22/Dec/2014 :
Melt In Mouth Butter Shortbread
Ingredients:
1/2 cup icing sugar
250g soft salted butter
2.5 cup plain flour/all purpose flour
1/3 cup rice flour
2tsp vanilla essence

Method: refer to above. Baked in pre-heated fan oven  170°C for 10-15min or until slight brown

Almond Cookies ( Simple Version)

Read about a  recipe for peanut cookies using 2:2:1:1 ratio from this blog: I bake I cook I eat. Find it is simple and easy. So, I tried on the almond cookie. However, I also read about almond is not as oily as peanut so 2:2:1:1 ratio may not so suitable. I made some changes on the flour. And the ratio become 3:2:1:1 using a measuring cup .The cookie turn out great! And find this cookie is more healthier than the rich almond cookie that I have posted earlier.

What do we need?

Ingredients:
1.5 cup (approx. 150g) plain flour
1 cup (approx. 140g ) raw almonds
1/2 cup (approx. 50g) icing sugar
1/2 cup  (approx. 90g) canola & sunflower cooking oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg for eggwash

Preheat oven : 180 deg C

Methond :
1. Rinse the almond with water. Dry fry in a non-stick wok/pan until it is completely dry and fragrant.  Remove from wok and leave it to cool, then, use a blender with grinding function and grind into powder . Alternatively, you can buy ready roasted almond to grind into powder so that you can omit the frying step.

2. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except egg and form into dough. It should not be crumbly and can easily form a ball. Add a little more oil if it is crumbly.

3. Use a teaspoon to scoop about 1/2 spoon of dough and roll into 1.5cm balls and place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Press down lightly with a chopstick or alteratively, use a straw or toothpick.

4. Glaze with eggwash.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 10-12min.  Or when it is golden brown. Remove from oven. Leave them to cool in the cooling rack then pack into airtight bottle.


P.S : You may replace the oil with pure groundnut oil/peanut oil.