Better bread

Finally, I did it at my 5th attempt!! Almost!! It was about time before my confidence level dropped. Lol.

I figured out the mistakes on why my bread turned out different in past attempts. On my first attempt, I may have over kneaded the dough. The yeast wasn't properly working on my 2nd attempt so my bread turned out flat. On my 3rd and 4th attempt, they weren't good either. I used the dough setting in my breadmaker but the dough was too watery, and I had to toss it away. 

I followed this recipe for this attempt. More work unlike the previous trials where I basically tossed everything and left to the breadmaker to do the magic. It didn't turned out good but much better than my other attempts. 

Why not rose and puffed properly, I wasn't too sure. Maybe I didn't kneaded properly. About 9cm tall, the texture was alright but could be better and softer.  The bottom crust was darker and harder so we peel off the crust before eating.

Baked bread using breadmaker

Ingredients:

2 cups warm water

3 tbsp refined sugar

1 tbsp yeast

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

5 cups bread flour

1tsp salt

Methods:

1. In the bowl, add in water and yeast. Stir and let the yeast dissolve for 10 minutes. 

2. In a large bowl, add in oil, 2 cups of flour, sugar and salt. Mix in yeast mixture with the flour mix. 

3. Gradually add in more flours to make a firm dough.
4. On a floured surface, knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes, until  smooth and elastic.
5. Place dough in an oiled bowl and leave in a warn place for a hour.
6. Punch the dough to let air out abd shape it into loaf.
7. Place the dough in the greased breadmaker. Select basic or white bread setting (for 1 1/2 LB) and press start. 

8. Sit down, relax and wait for your bread to be ready in few hours later. Let it cool down before take it out from the canister into a rack.

Enjoyed my homemade bread

Conclusion: I will try to bake again in the future. For the time being, I had enough of bread making over the MCO. Buying breads from bakeries are so much easier than all the works and frustration. :) However I believe thar I will make a better (if not perfect) bread one day. *fingers cross*

Flat!

My bread making adventure continued when I got my breadmaker. 

School holiday was spent at home, with me experimenting with the breadmaker and trying out recipes that I found online. 

For my 2nd attempt, I was following GoDairyFree's recipe. Eggless, milkless and butterless white bread. 

And my bread turned out looked like this!! A flatbread! 3cm thick loaf of flatbread.

It was a mix of emotion for me. Happy and disappointed at the same time. Happy that the bread's texture looked and tasted like bread; crust was not burnt and hard while thr inside was soft and not too dense. But disappointed that it was not thick enough, not like the normal white bread we buy and eat. 

Tasted good when it was eaten while it was warm.  We had this bread for afternoon snack. We ate it like that; it was sweet and tasty. Hubby enjoyed it with his lamb stew which I cooked for dinner.

I will keep on baking bread. As they said, practice makes perfect. Any tips and advices, I appreciate them.

I found an interesting blog on the author's baking experience and his theories on why the bread came out flat. 

When it came

I was very excited when my sister from KL sent me her breadmaker in middle of the month. She only used it thrice, so it was pretty new. She gave me as a gift since she wasn't using it anymore. 

It was delivered to my doorstep on Saturday, when the school holiday started. Ta-da!! My first breadmaker. 

My new toy

I have been considering of buying breadmaker for so long. And the desire was even higher when we discovered of Jamie's allergic to milk, egg and cheese. He loves bread and cakes so much. Most bakeries don't sell allergic-free breads, so option of making own bread is there. 

Inside canister

So when my sister learnt about that during her CNY visit to our house, she immediately offered her breadmaker. Thank you so much, Betty sis!! 

Model

When it came, I started to learn more about this model, how to use and bake with it. We surfed through the internet, Youtube etc. That very same evening, we went to a nearby bakery to buy the necessary ingredients. Yup, we were that excited!!! Can't wait to get started!

The ingredients we bought

We got a pack of bread flour, refined sugar, yeast and butter. In the end I didn't use the butter, I used olive oil instead. I ran out of olive oil (coincidently), so I got to use up the olive oil that hubby got from Spain a couple of years ago.

4 small bottles of oil

It was a lesson to make bread from scratch that evening. There was always first in everything, right??  I am never too old to learn how to bake a bread! :) 

We used the machine to knead and keep it to rise for an hour. Then took the dough out from the machine canister to knead and punch it down before putting it back into the machine to bake. 

We tried the basic bread function which took 3 hours to be ready. Of course we didn't wait as it was getting late. So the next morning, we woke up to this!!! 

A round bread??? Hmm. Looked like the dough didn't rise at all. 

The texture wasn't what we wanted. Not like bread texture. Too dense and too gummy. So it wasn't a good first attempt. Please excuse me, as I am a first timer. A novice baker tried her best to bake. We tried again that day. Guess how it turned out to be???

Stay tune for my next post. :)