Hello from Singapore
Hi Everybody,
I am Alpana from Singapore. I first joined TFL in 2006, when I made my first bread, Challah. It turned out great, but somehow I never returned to bread making, though I did a lot of other bakes. Finally I decided to take the plunge last year & bought a bread machine. As I had already read a lot before buying the machine, I managed to come up with perfectly acceptable bread, without any disasters. Now we hardly buy bread from outside and my bread machine is used almost every other day. I have slowly graduated to Jim Lahey's no knead bread, which is becoming another staple in my house. Now I would like to venture further in artisan breads. I have been passive user of this site for last many years & am impressed by all you bakers out there. Hope I get to learn from you all. Happy bread baking!
I started out with a bread machine, too, for the kneading and rising of the one bread I made at the time. Eventually you progress from there, and adopt techniques that make long kneading no longer necessary.
Happy Baking,
Karin
Thanks, Karin :)
Hello From a fellow TFL Baker!!
I am currently in Alaska but call East Tennessee home. I am wondering what kind of Bread Machine you have? I have a Zojirushi at home in Tennessee and thought I could do without bread baking for 3 months, but I found that is not the case! I have Fibromyalgia and Arthritis so kneading is difficult for me, so I bought another machine here in Anchorage! I love to let it do the dough for me and I form or make it into whatever I want. Tomorrow I plan to make a recipe for Cinnamon Rolls I just received from a good friend just a few moments ago!
I hope you have alot of fun on here! I love this site!!
Jannrn
Hi Jannrn,
Thanks for your welcome. I have a Sunbeam 5891, which I ordered from Amazon. I was actually eyeing the Panasonic SD YD 250, but they did not deliver to Singapore directly. Zo is of course the ultimate dream, but I first wanted to see (and show my hubby) that it was not a 2 day wonder. Sunbeam delivers what it promises, but it can't be Zo. I hate kneading & my BM does a perfect job, even when I bake in oven. I even make jams in my BM. I don't regret buying Sunbeam as my first machine. And even if does not have advanced programmes, I can manually pause it to run the cycles as per the bread's need. My kids prefer the soft, sandwich loaves from BM to the crusty, artisan ones that me and my hubby love. So nowadays I do both.
Do let us know how you cinnamon rolls turn out :)
Alpana
Hello to a fellow Singaporean! I started a few years back with no knead bread too and am now playing with more complex sourdough formulas. Let me know if you need any Singapore specific baking hints or even some sourdough starter to get you started!
-Tim
Hi Tim,
Very pleased to see a fellow Singaporean on TFL. Thanks for your offer to help. Three months back, I made my own sourdough starter as per Debra Wink's instructions on this site & it is working like a dream. I would love to learn your experiences on sourdough baking as I have realised that our temperatures make sourdough baking a totally different game from what we read in standard books or sites.
I experimented with keeping my starter in fridge and feeding weekly and keeping it on countertop and feeding twice or thrice a day. I realised that we prefer the breads made from starter kept in fridge as the ones made from one kept at room temp were quite sour. So now I just have a batch in fridge & one frozen for back-up and we love the breads & pancakes made from sourdough. These days, I make no knead bread with 50 gms starter at 100% hydration, reduce 25 gms flour & 25 gms water & skip instant yeast and the bread turns out beautiful in the same time frame as using yeast. When I have time, I try two or three builds of the starter.
In my no knead baking (with commercial yeast or sourdough starter) I have found that my second rise for bread is quite short (20 minutes gives me the best oven spring). Do you also experience the same?
Alpana
Yes I think the starter maintence definitely has to be modified. I keep mine in the fridge, about 10g. Then when I want to bake, I will elaborate it a few days before until it is active and keep an extra bit which goes back to the fridge. I feed it about 2-3 times a day with a high feeding ratio 1:5:5 to even 1:10:10. It is normally active within 6-8 hours.
Yes sourdough breads tend to get quite sour as most of the time the starter has fermented too long. I like to work with a stiff one too as it slows down the fermentation process quite a bit.
I have not baked no knead breads in quite a long while so no help there but for most breads I do preshape, then rest for 15-30 minutes followed by a final bulk ferment of 50 minutes - 1 hour. For doughs that are fermented overnight, I divide, let them rest to warm them up for at least 30 minutes before proofing them for about 1-1.5 hours. These are my general timings. Like the popular saying goes, watch to dough not the clock!
Tim