Sourdough Coconut & Honey Loaf

What is slim and loooooong...? ;)

I bought a slim-long loaf tin when I was back in Japan last time, and finally got around to try it out with this aromatic Coconut & Honey Loaf.

Ingredients:

Strong flour 125g

Plain flour 125g

Starter 110g

Milk 160g

Honey 25g

Coconut butter 2tbsp

Salt 4g

This loaf has such a nice smell from the coconut (I use homemade coconut butter because it's much cheaper than shop bought ones!) and natural sweetness from the honey. The dough might seem pretty weak as it's got 50% plain flour, but don't worry, this is what make the crumb nice and soft.

Good size for small hands. ♥︎

Mini loaf three ways...

Plain.

Buttered.

Eggy bread or French toast (by Andy).

They were all nice but, the best was Andy's quick eggy bread. Good call for doing that! (Hum, I actually don't know his eggy bread recipe...). 

What do you put in your eggy bread?

Sourdough Raisin Loaf

This raisin loaf is not just 'bread with raisins', it's more than that...

1... The raisins are super juicy.
2... Plenty of raisins to satisfy your raisin hole.
3... And, It's sourdough! (are your one of those sourdough lover's like me?)


Ingredients:

Flour 250g

Starter 125g

Brown sugar 15g

Salt 4g

A good couple of  handfuls of raisins

White wine (enough to cover and soak the raisins)

The secret to the juicy raisins is the white wine. You cook the raisin in white wine (I use sweet one) so that the raisins are nice and soft, then let them soak up the wine overnight. Add half the prepared raisins a minute before you stop mixing the dough, and the rest for the final shaping.

I don't like it when I get burnt raisins on bread, so I make sure all the raisins are nicely tucked inside before putting the dough in the tin.

Every mouthful you get juicy raisins;)

Do you toast your raisin bread or not?

Macaron - Step by Step -

With macarons I've had many failures in the past. I've tried and tested many different ways to master the art of making macarons. And now, finally, I can say that my macaron success rate is 99.9%.

So here is the recipe for you!
Bon Appetit - Macaron - step by step -

With the quantity of the ingredients shown in this recipe you can make about 10 sets of macarons. This recipe is for a small amount of macarons so you can try many different flavours. Also, with this method, you don't need to leave the piped mixture before baking, so you don't need to wait around or misjudge the timing to put the macarons in the oven. (with an authentic way of making macarons, you need to let the macaron's skin dry before baking...)

Here are some of my favourite flavours.

Pistachio used to be my favourite and wherever I go and find a macaron shop I had to try their pistachios. 

However, my new favourite is this one, salted caramel popcorn!

The combination of sweet and salty is so addictive.

I like to put some Japanese influence to my macarons too...

Purple sweet potato.

Matcha green tea.

Mini ones;)

Woodfired oven sourdough pizza!

Hot hot hot, soooooo hot! But I won't complain, we've got to take advantage of this heat wave, haven't we?

So, we fired up our woodfired oven last weekend, and had a bit of family pizza evening in the garden.

Here is the sourdough pizza recipe; Sourdough Pizza.

This sourdough pizza dough is by far my favourite pizza base...

Tomato sauce and a lot of cheese, simple, but that's how I like!

It was very hot near the oven but this heat is the key for a good pizza base. ;)

As always, it was fun. Roll the dough, put toppings, bake it, eat it, and go make another one and repeat again. ;D

Sourdough pain de campagne

What sort of flour do you use for your breads?

I've been using the same flour for a while and wanted to try something new to see what difference the flour can bring to my bread.

I went to a local whole food shop and bought a bag of Gilchesters Organics Unbleached White Strong Wheat Flour to try it out with my Pain de campagne. (Recipe here.)

You can get their flour on the Gilchesters Organics website or on Amazon.

So, how is this flour?

It's pretty different from the strong white flour that I normally use. It's unbleached, so obviously the colour is not 'white' but more like nice caramel colour. It absorbed the liquid quickly and very well, which I think is a good thing because you don't damages the dough by mixing too much.

When it comes to the strength of the dough, I felt it was a little weak, and that effected the crumb to be more of a crumbly side than a chewy (it's a personal preference but I like my crumb to be more chewy...)

The loaf rose well.

The crust was good too. It had nice toughness and lovely colour. ;)

And, it tasted great. This flour brought out just the right amount of that unique sour taste of sourdough bread.

The recipe needs a bit of modification for this flour, but all in all, I really like this stone ground white flour. ;D

PS. This bread is also excellent for sandwiches!

Mini Sourdough Focaccia

I thought you might be a little over loaded with Japanese bread by the previous two posts, so here is a very simple yet super delicious mini sourdough focaccia for you. ;D

Ingredients:

Strong flour 200g

Plain flour 50g

Starter (Yoghurt & Raisin starter) 125g

Milk 174g

Olive Oil 1 tbsp + more for greasing

Salt 4g

Herbs or Toppings of your choice

The reason why this simple four-ingredients-bread is so tasty is because of the long fermentation time. It depends on the temperature but my sourdough bread normally takes 8-12hours (room temperature) for the first rise. On the other hand this mini focaccia dough has its first rise in the fridge about 36 hours, which helps the dough develop the good flavour and nice air bubbles.

Rosemary and pink Himalayan salt on the top...

Good size for a snack. ;) 

Dip it in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, use two focaccia as sandwich breads, or dip in soup...

Simple focaccia can be eaten in many ways!

Vanilla & Matcha Melon pan with sourdough starter

Following my last post, Sourdough Annn pan, here is another Japanese bread.

Melon pan!

(Are you thinking 'what's melon pan?', then here is the answer.;D)

Lana, Andy, and I, we all love this sweet buns. This time I made one with vanilla biscuit on top and the other matcha green tea biscuit. The matcha ones also have chestnut paste inside.

I think the beauty of Melon Pan comes down to the skin (the biscuit.) I like my skin to be nice and crunchy, not to thin but not too over powering to the bread. The ratio I usually do is '50g dough to 40g biscuit' for a bun.

Ingredients:

*Bread*

Starter (banana) 120g

Very strong Flour 250g

Milk 150g

Egg 1

Sugar 30g

Honey 1 tbsp

Oil 15g

Butter 35g

Salt 3g

---

*Biscuit*

Butter 60g

Sugar 115g

Plain Flour 200g

(For matcha, use 190g flour +  10g matcha powder)

Egg 1

Not only is the biscuit goes well with the sweet bun, but also it's pretty awesome as is. So, if you get any leftovers, bake them at 175 ºc for 10 minutes, then another 10-15 minutes at 150 ºc.

They are so moreish. ;-d

Inside the Matcha Melon Pan.

Chestnut and Matcha, it's like a dream team!

They are best eaten on the day they are baked (if you could kept them long enough...), but if you're having them the following day, I recommend you put them in the fridge (since it has chestnut paste inside) and take them out to room temperature or warm them up slightly in the oven before you eat them.

Sourdough Ann pan - あんぱん -

It's time for another Japanese bread, people!

Being away from home-home I do miss Japanese style breads, after all these slightly sweet small buns are what I grew up with...

So, today, it's Ann Pan! These sweet buns filled with sweet azuki bean paste have already appeared on my blog a few times before. It's, without a doubt, one of my favourite Japanese bread.

Recipe for Sourdough Ann Pan or Ann Pan with dried yeast.

I put as much Annko as possible inside, possibly I got a bit too excited. Some of the buns got erupted, but I  still like the way they look anyway. ;)

I also made a XL Ann Pan with leftover dough.

(Not the sweet dough but simple white one...).

It's difficult to see from the photo but it was bigger than my palm. ;D

If there is any Japanese bread that you have heard of, seen, or eaten before and want to know a recipe of it, let me know about it! I'll try it out in the WOS kitchen and share the recipe with you. :)

Pain de Campagne with Rose sourdough starter

I've learnt my lesson...

'The starters are all different just like we are.'

Do you remember my rose sourdough starter that I made back in June? The starter has been considerably less active and smelt much more sour than my other starters. So, I thought... 'I'm going to feed it again and if it's still not looking better, I've got to say bye bye to this starter...'

I fed it as usual. I left it overnight as usual.

But still, it looked bit sad... ;(

Because I was reluctant to throw my starter away, I left it out for a few more days, and guess what! it started to look and smell better! So, I fed it one more time and the following morning it was as active as my other starters.

It seems that all it needed was a bit more time in room temperature...

To test my newly revived rose starter out I made a simple wholemeal pain de campagne.

It rose (oh rose!) well. It baked very well. And most importantly it tasted amazing!

Ingredients for simple pain de campagne;

Starter 125g

Strong white flour 200g

Wholemeal flour 50g

Milk 170g

Salt 4g

Oil

I was so glad that I didn't throw this starter away.

The rose starter reminded me of this... 'The starters are all different, so don't rush them. Watch your starter carefully and know your starter well so that you know what the starter really needs (whether it's water, flour, temperature or time...) to be its best!' 

Buckwheat sourdough mini baguette & rolls

I have a bag of buckwheat flour in the cupboard that has been sitting there like forever... So, I decided to put that in my bread to see how it goes.

Usually I use a mixture of strong white flour and plain flour for simple rolls but this time I replaced the plain flour with the buckwheat. Compared to the dough with plain flour, the buckwheat flour dough felt wetter and little slower to prove.

After the mixing and some stretch-and-fold, I let the dough rise in the fridge for 36 hours. This long proving in a low temperature made the dough feel really good! As I was shaping, I could already feel these guys were going to have good air bubbles. :D

Mini baguette.

Humm, I love the distinctive aroma of buckwheat.

And here is the crumb...

I was so pleased to see those air pockets! 

The crust was not as hard and thick as I wanted but still it was a pretty good result. :)

And here is the roll.

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a good 'ear' appeared on my bread...

I'm going to change the recipe a bit and try this again to see if I can get better crust.

Hopefully I'll get a better result and be able to share the recipe!