Extending my break

Its been 2 long weeks since I have blogged. And the break seems to get extended. I never thought its going to be a long break. I am not sure when I can resume serious blogging. I really miss visiting all your blogs. Very soon, I will try to catch up with all the wonderful posts out there, though it may take some more time to put my blog back to action.

I was very touched by emails from some of my blogging friends, who enquired about my absence from blogosphere. Its a great feeling to know that you are missed.

German Rye Bread 田园稞麦面包

This is my favorite German Rye Bread. It reminded me when I was first tasting a rye bread in Berlin hotel for breakfast. I just miss it so much until I found a recipe from the book that my mum gave to me weeks ago. This is quite a dense and solid bread containing with 1/3 of rye flour and again, it is a healthy version of bread.

I followed exactly the same recipe from the book to make this rye bread. I mixed these ingredients in my dough mixer: 200g bread flour, 100g rye flour, 5g instant dry yeasts, 5 g salt, 190g slightly warm water and 10g of molasses. Then I placed it in a grease bowl and covered with cling film to rest for 30 minutes. Punch it down after the resting and roughly shape it into a ball by simply tighten it up and let it face up rather than the smooth part face up as the book had mentioned to give it a rustic look. I covered it with a damp towel and let it proof for about 30 minutes before baked it in the oven at 230'C about 25 - 30 minutes.

I really like this rustic look and it shows a very homemade country bread. My hubby and I was very enjoying the rye flavor and we hardly taste the yeasts on this bread. I shall put this recipe in my regular breakfast menu.

Matcha Red Bean Rolls

So, I continued with my red bean paste that had stored in the freezer days ago. I've used some of them to made few chinese red bean pao by using some premix pao flour from Phoon Huat. The others I used it for matcha red bean rolls. This is my first time to match this matcha sponge dough with red bean paste as I think red bean always go very well with green tea. Anyway, the dough is quite soft, but the problem is I was too greedy when wrapping too much red bean in the dough and finally the red bean paste is much prominent than the dough. What a good lesson for me not to be greedy next time. I followed the sponge dough recipe from an old recipe book. This book has been with my mum about 20 years, and now she passed it to me as she mentioned she had already retired from the kitchen. This book immersed in the water when our house flooded by a heavy rain many years ago. But my mum tried to dry it as I think she also loves this book very much. It really put my mood down for making bread when I was first looking at this book. But after read through it I really falled in love with it. The recipe book contains lots of old fashion recipe especially those European bread and rolls that my hubby and I love to have every morning. I shall keep this book as it is just so meaningful for mum and I.

I followed a plain sponge dough recipe from this book to make the green tea rolls and I've just added a tablespoon of matcha into it, however, I hardly taste the green tea flovour. I shall say my skills of making bread is still not up to the standard as you can see the rolls doesn't look in good round shape. If anyone have a good skills please please teach me and I will try to improve next time.

I used half of the original recipe to make 9 rolls and add 1 tablespoon of green tea powder. I put together all the ingredietns to my dough mixer except butter. Knead for about 15 minutes then I add butter and continue kneading until the dough well developed. I rest it in a grease bowl with cling film for about 40 minutes at room temperature then I divided it into 9 balls and rest for another 25 minutes covered with damp towel. I flatten each small dough to add in a red bean paste (don't be greedy like me) then covered with damp towel for another 60 minutes proofing before bake in a 200'C about 20 minutes.

Original sponge dough recipe from the book:

350g bread flour

6g instant dry yeast

18g sugar

7g salt
7g milk powder

230g slightly warm water

18g butter

** I added 1 tablespoon green tea powder