Article by Tan Hsueh Yun. Straits Times Urban supplement. Click on the article to read.

Durum Double Raisin Bread with Pumpkin seeds

I was in the Aljunied area and decided to check out the an organic products outlet. They carry a wide range of organic products, including flours such as rye and spelt. I love their products, which I feel is good value for money. I have been using their Himalayan Pink rock salt since I started baking. I gave a bottle to a food writer friend once who subsequently featured it in the Straits Times Urban supplement. Another product that I love is their organic Demerara sugar. Since I love good coffee, I couldn't possibly just use any sugar. So whenever I was at the supermarket at Fairprice Finest, I will load up with a dozen of the salt and sugar. This never fails to earn some stares from the people in the queue. 

While I was at the outlet, I chatted with the salesperson there. She let me sample the three types of organic raisins sold there. They were huge and tasted fantastic. Most of the raisins out there are soaked in oil which imparts a taste but the oil in these raisins was minimal and the natural taste of the raisins was more pronounced. Needless to say, I left the shop with 3 bags of goodies for my bread making. I have to add here that I am not paid to endorse their products nor am I related to anyone in the company.

I got some Durum flour from Phoon Huat store at Sims Place on my way back. This was different from the gritty semolina sold by Prima. Durum flour is used in Sicilian bread but Amy Scherber has a Semolina Fennel Raisin bread which I used to make. It is one of my favorite. Since I had all these ingredients on hand, I wanted to make a special Double Raisin Durum Fennel bread. I was looking high and low for my pack of Fennel but alas, it had been thrown out by my wife because it was past its expiry date. Fortunately, I had a pack of German bread spice given to me by a friend. The spice mix consisted of Fennel, Cumin and Coriander.

For the bake, the Durum flour was one-third of the flour used. The hydration was 70% and included 5% olive oil. I used both Black and Green Raisins with the pumpkin seeds. The bread was delicious. My only regret was that I did not add in enough raisins. However, the main reason why I did not overload on the raisin was because I was afraid that the kids would not touch the bread. My wife also dislikes the burnt raisin sticking to the crust. Fortunately for this bake, my daughter actually complimented me for the bread. What more can I ask for?

Flour Test - German Ciabatta premix

I am very happy to have received a gift of flours from some friends recently. The 4 bags included a Ciabatta premix, Volkonbrot mix, Spelt and Rye flour. I started with the Ciabatta premix because it was a bread that I was familiar with. Moreover, I did not have the time to translate the German instructions for the rest of the flours. 

Thanks to the internet, language is no longer a barrier. I was able to figure out the contents of the package with minimal effort. The premix contained sugar which is one ingredient I seldom use. As a result, the bread turn out a little darker than usual. I tweaked the hydration up to 70% as the specified 65% was dryer than the Ciabatta dough that I was used to handling. Even so, I felt that the bread might have been better if I had adjusted it up to 75%. I did not follow the instructions on the package as I preferred my own method. Besides, it was a working day and I only had 30 minutes to make the dough.

The verdict? The flavor was good considering the fact that it was just a 12 hour bread made without preferment. The bread was a little more salty that what I was used to making so it would be better to go with unsalted butter. The crust was a little different from bread made with my regular flour. It was crunchy and was easier to bite off, exactly the quality of crust that I had been looking for. I wonder how I can tweak my regular flour to get this kind of crust.

Baguettes with poolish and levain

I was in major baking overdrive this weekend, baking a total of 10 ciabattas and 6 baguettes over a 2 day period. For the 6 baguettes, I was in a situation where I had a ripe poolish and a starter which was in its first build stage. Since I didn't want all that flour to go to waste, I decided to incorporate both the poolish and levain to make some baguette. The main dough was mixed at midnight and I made the baguettes after I returned from my yoga session.

When it came out of the oven, my wife remarked that it had a very beautiful color. It was a good chance for me to thank my neighbor for his gift of the original Tarragon sprig which has since multiplied. Another loaf went to my French neighbor. I hope the bread was good enough him. After all, he must grown up eating really good authentic French bread in France.

Walnut Raisin Bread

It's been some time since I made some fruit and nut bread.  I thought I'd do some bread but with a twist. The bread was a gift to a friend who invited me to lunch and since I was going to give him one of my infamous hard stony bread, I thought I had better balance it with something softer and sweeter. I hope he and his children will enjoy it. At the same time, I want to bake something softer for my father who has a problem eating the hard bread that I bake.

I settled for walnut raisin based on Hamelman's Pullman bread but tweaked the hydration for the additional walnuts and raisin. 

DIY Piezoelectric musical instrument pickups

I have been fooling around with my new electric guitar recently and it was really fun. I have been playing the guitar since I was in Secondary 2 and that's probably too many decades than I would like to admit. All this while, I have been playing classical guitar but now electric guitars are very affordable as they are made in China. The guitar I own is made by a company linked to Gibson and the quality for the price cannot be matched. Since I am a novice, I settled for a small guitar amp with built in effects and I am hooked, spending my evenings trying to master the solo from Hotel California.

Well, long before I was hooked on bread, I was already hooked on the guitar. Since I could not find a teacher at that time, I had to learn it by myself through books. Thankfully, for the electric guitar, there is now Youtube.

Since the guitar amp is there and my daughter has been pestering me to get her an electric violin, I decided to improvise one for her. I have been doing some research on the internet about Piezoelectric transducers. These are usually found in cheap $2 buzzers found readily at Sim Lim Tower. The surprising thing is that these buzzers can be used as pickups because the piezoelectric element will produce a signal when subjected to vibrations. So all it takes is a soldering iron and you got yourself a high quality pickup for your acoustic instrument.

Since it was so easy to make, I made one for my classical guitar and one for my daughter's violin. It worked better than I expected with good gain and negligible noise. I covered the piezo element with sticky foam pads meant as scratch protection pads for chairs.

When I showed my daughter the modification which I did to her violin, she was not very pleased and I realized that she might have some problems explaining all those black pieces of foam. I improved the placement and concealed it under the tailpiece. Now the only thing showing is a little pig tail. I told my daughter that if she happens to be on a stage where there are amplifiers around, she'd be able to plug in her violin and play directly.

Thriving again

Pots of dill waiting to be given away
My mini-terrarium method of growing from cuttings. 
Beautiful curry leaf berries.
Bushy Terragon grown from a sprig given by a neighbor.
Sage thriving from a sprig given to me by a dear friend.
Thyme and basil just released from its plastic protective dome.

Thriving again

My herb patch was hit by a swarm of red spider mites which were extremely difficult to eradicate. Fortunately they did not attack my precious European herbs but attacked the butterfly pea till they all perished. Even the passion fruit vines were not spared. I tried everything from soap water vegetable oil emulsions, neem oil and even sourdough starters to glue them. The only thing I did not use was chemical based pesticides as I did not want to poison myself ingesting pesticides. I had to re-grow all the butterfly pea again. This time round, I spread the seeds from two different plants to ensure cross-fertilization.  The plants are thriving again with many seed pods hanging on the vines.

Just as suddenly as they had appeared, they were greatly reduced in recent weeks and the plants seem to be thriving again. I wish I knew the reason and can only guess that it was because of the cooler weather. It is yet again another example of the maxim that difficulties do not last forever.  I am reminded again of Adi Shankara's Vivekachudami (Crest Jewel of Wisdom).

My herb patch has grown because I found an effective way of growing herbs from cuttings given to me by friends or bought from the supermarket. The cuttings are dipped in rooting hormone and planted in a sealed plastic container with a little water. The moisture is sealed in and the cutting does not dry out while the leaves are still able to make food. Over a week or two, the roots will sprout and the cutting can then be transplanted onto the soil. After transplanting, the plant is capped with the plastic container for another couple of weeks. It protects the vulnerable young plant from the rain, wind and insects.

Rosemary Lemon Sourdough Bread

Rosemary Lemon Sourdough Bread

I have not been making bread for the past week and supplies in the freeezer was down to the last quarter portion of a whole-wheat boule which I had made a week earlier. My son has been bringing sandwiches to school for lunch recently. He came back one day saying that his classmate sampled the bread and wanted to buy some. I am happy to see the bread consumed quickly these days.

For the last 2 weeks, I have been feeding my rye starter diligently and since my Rosemary was looking very bushy, I decided to harvest it to make some Rosemary Lemon bread. I had wanted to try out with Thyme and Terragon but decided to stay with the Rosemary.

The bread was made in the time intervals when I was in the house. It was a busy day for me as I had to help my son with the logistics of organizing a BBQ for his uniformed group and coupled with sending my wife and daughter to their classes, I thought the bread was not going to make it. The bread was slightly under-proofed as I had to rush out to pick up my daughter. However, it turned out better than I had hoped. The bread had a pleasant Rosemary aroma with a hint of lemon.

I used 4 stalks and the zest of 1 lemon with 50oz of flour. The hydration was slightly over 70%. The slash pattern was that of a cluster of Rosemary leaves.

Levain Bread with new rye starter

After a week of feeding, the culture was ready to do some work. I was planning to bake the bread at 9.00 pm last night but after mixing the dough, I realised that I was going to finish late into the night. I had already done a previous baguette bake earlier in the afternoon and after a whole day of playing with my new electric guitar, I was feeling a little tired.

It was a good chance to see if the culture can withstand a night in the fridge. When I woke up in the morning, I was hoping to see the dough reach the top of the container. I was disappointed to see the dough barely a third of the container. I had no choice but to let it continue on the kitchen counter.

After about 2 hours, it was ready to shape. I tested it out on 2 different shapes.  They looked beautiful when they came out of the oven. As it came out around noon, I was able to photograph them outdoor in natural light. The results were much better than the usual photographs I take in the kitchen at midnight.