Its our turn to provide snacks for CH's group meeting (again!) I had a hell time making puffs last year for the same meeting. Ever since, I promise myself NEVER EVER to put up anything if its a first time for me. So this time, I decided I wanna do a cheesecake (been craving for one), and a bread. How about char siu (roast pork) buns? Nah... refer to Rule No. 1 (up there) I've never made buns before... how about floss buns? It used to be a craze back home, and Rule No. 1 came up again.
I was patient to slowly take my pick from the hundreds of recipes available in the Internet. And voila! I found it! Focaccia bread! Back home when I had a bread machine, I used to get the pre-mix, dumped them in, programmed it, and then happily went to sleep, knowing I'll be greeted with the strong savory aroma of herbs and warm toasty bread on the next morning. Unfortunately focaccia bread is not cheap here, a loaf costs about $5 from the Farmer's market here.
I thought I'd do a trial first. I had no bread machine, so I had to knead by hand. Happily I used the recipe from here, which said to knead till the dough is slightly sticky. What in the world does that mean? slightly means how much? So I used my guess-tation, and leave it slightly sticky. The bread didn't rise a lot, probably caused by me making small dimples in it RIGHT before placing it in the oven, which was wrong - gotta let it proof a second time. And I thought its probably too sticky. Anyways I was glad this wasn't the actual deal, so it gave me time to research on the proper steps to making the right bread. And I found another recipe which I used instead.
Ahem! So sharing what I've learnt - yeast which is a leavening agent used in breads loves sugar. The first step I did was place yeast and sugar together in a mixer bowl. Then boil some water till temperature reached 45C (113F) which felt like lukewarm to the skin. Pour this water into the bowl, wait for 5 mins for the yeast to react. The bowl has to be put in a warm place, so I preheated the oven to the lowest temperature, turn the heat off when its ready, and place the bowl in with the oven door ajar.
Sure enough the mixture was foamy, with a layer of foam on the surface. In another bowl, I had measured the flour, salt and rosemary. I then made a well in the middle, and poured the yeast mixture in. Pour the olive oil in, mixed them up, and then rolled the dough out on a heavily floured surface for kneading. And I knead, ignoring all the sticky wetty stuffs collected on my fingers, palms, pulling back and pushing the dough down with all my body weight. Till it became a smooth, pliable, and springy dough. Place it back into the oven again (should still be warm, else preheat again) and wait for an hour for it to proof to double its size.
Then punch it down, made dimples all over it, threw some cheese and garlic over it, then proof again in the same warm place. Once it doubled, its ready for baking! Easy peasy?
Turned out the bread was a bit too high, looked more like a cake. Hm, gotta reduce the flour next time. No worries, I sliced the bottom off, then sliced the resulting loaf into half, ready for next day's grill.
The next morning, I placed mozzarella, prosciutto and capocollo over it, and grilled them in my panini press.
As for the cheesecake, I got my recipe here
My proud productions:
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Verdict: The cheesecake was light, fluffy, tasted really good! So was the focaccia bread! Both were a hit with CH's colleagues. Aah, I'm still relishing my victory moments.
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