Yeast Free Breads 2005

2009-10-20T01:40:00.003+08:00

6 April 2005

You may be wondering what on earth is a "yeast free bread"? What sort of bread could this be, eh? Is is a cake or is it a flat bread, one may wonder...It is as the term literally describes. No yeast is used at all and the leavening agent used for this particular type of bread is Baking Soda or Bicarbonate of Soda. It is also known as a quick bread since the ingredients are simple and the method is a quick all in one bowl mix.

A quick bread has a cake like crumb and the texture can be a bit dense. Hence, do not overmix the ingredients or else it'll over stretch the gluten and the bread ends up being tough.

There were so many different varieties of Irish Soda Bread recipes and I wanted to try something different instead of the mundane traditional one. Mind you, I'm merely a beginner at bread baking and here I am already going ahead of myself. So I thought to myself, hmmm let's make it healthy,tasty and wholesome.

How about a Wholemeal Potato Soda Bread?

So I quickly searched for a simple Irish Soda Bread recipe and added my favourite ingredients in. Mix and stir, viola! Shaped the dough into a ball and placed it on a lightly greased pie pan. Using a sharp knife to cut a crisscross and into the oven it went in my pie pan at a temperature of 190 Degrees C to 200 Degrees C for 50 mins.

I did however tested it with a skewer after it reached the 30min mark as stated in the regular Irish Soda Bread but it was still wet and gooey. It's due to the added ingredients of grated raw potato, so it took a little while longer to cook.

It was well worth the wait. The aroma was heavenly and the crust was crispy when I knocked it with a wooden spoon. It did make a whole thud to signify that it's cooked and I did the pierce it with a skewer to ensure it was properly cooked.

Here are my photos of my first ever Wholemeal Potato Soda Bread:

Smear a generous helping of butter or cream cheese on a slice is certainly to die for.

Easter Bread 2006

2009-10-17T22:29:00.005+08:00

Thursday, September 28, 2006
My newly tweaked inspirational delicious Hot Crossed Buns

Just a few hours ago earlier this morning, I'd attempted to bake my first time; a wetter & slacker dough for my Poppy seed hot crossed buns. I had changed the recipe I got in my recipe to use yellow raisins/glace red cherries/glace mixed peel and added poppy seeds & wholemeal bread flour too instead of the regular traditional recipe.

Using cointreau which I may add is an excellent option to soak all the fruits in overnight. Thanks to everyone's input on handling wetter & slacker dough, my first attempt produced a heavenly mouth watering aroma of Cointreau soaked fruits when sliced opened.

Oven spring was fantastic, the texture was soft & fluffy although it didn't have the irregular holes that I'd wanted in a slack dough. I reckon it's due to the fact that I didn't do any poolish/preferment/sponge first nor did I handle the dough gently when I was shaping it.

Here is the picture showing the fluffy texture of the crumb. You can also see the little bits of glace cherries/yellow raisins/mixed peel peeking out. Unfortunately, the poppy seeds aren't too noticeable.