These were from King Arthur’s Flour Baker’s Companion.

Beautiful burger buns, makes 8 large buns of 16 small ones

1 cup water

2 tbsp butter

1 large egg

3 3/4 cups bread flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tablespoon instant yeast ( this was one sachet of yeast)

Knead all ingredients in a bowl or with your electric mixer. Cover and let rise in a warm place for an hour. I shaped mine into 16 small balls and arranged then in a square baking tin. Let rise again for 40 mins-an hour. I brushed them with a beaten egg and sprinkled various toppings: cracked black pepper, mixed dried Italian herbs, paprika and dried rosemary.Bake at 180C for 20-25 mins.

The buns were a little unevenly sized..

They were easily pulled apart and split. The buns were soft and good eaten on the same day. However I still agree that doughs with a small amount of yeast and long rising times still produce bread with the best flavor. I made pizza dough from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice the other day and the book recommends letting the dough rest overnight or up to 3 days in the fridge. The dough itself is slow rising and the flavour of the end product really good. This quick burger bun dough rose very very quickly, ballooning in size in a short period of time. However the bread had a mild yeasty taste to it, I think from the large amount of yeast and short rising period.It was just something I noticed though hardly discernible especially with the burger patty and fillings.

 

Now a little home project..

I finally gained courage after babysitting my 3 house plants for the past 6 months and filled my planter box with a row of heliconia!

It feels very tropical sitting out in the balcony. Which I must confess I don’t do often because of the sound of traffic! The only time we do is to enjoy a hot drink after 11 pm when traffic almost disappears and we start hearing crickets from the field.

I’m supposed to water the heliconia once a day. I bought the fertilizer the nursery person recommended and with the sun in the balcony, the plants are supposed to thrive. Since they’ve arrived, its been rather cloudy. I hope they get enough sun to survive. Thanks mama for helping me pick out the plants while I sat withered by the heat in the shade of the greenhouse. It was so hot and humid at the nursery. But there was something very heady sitting in tropical heat surrounded by the most amazing orchids. I’m very afraid of orchids but someday who knows..

Just a sneak

I have a prenatal massage session scheduled before an antenatal appointment so this has got to be short. I will come back with more pictures and the recipe soon!

 

Just a little note on hypnobirthing. My mom is skeptical of the whole idea and I can say almost all my colleagues when I even mention I want to try for a natural drug free birth. I think doctors more so than any other women in any other profession have very negative birthing perceptions based on what they have experience in medical school and the course of their work. A strong reason why I stopped work 2 weeks before my due date was that I was getting a little tired of “scary birthing stories” which everyone was so keen to indulge me with. The other reason was of course I felt my function was declining and I did not want to make a mistake before I decided that enough was enough. I didn’t want to be that old surgeon who bungles up but refuses to retire!

 

My first experience in hypnosis was in medical school with a psychiatrist who practiced hypnosis as a form of treatment to help his patients. I was “hypnotized” with a suggestion that I will stop hiccupping. At a point of time, I had bothersome bouts of hiccups, for no reason which lasted for some time. During the experience, I did not feel asleep, I was fully aware. The only feeling I had was that of time distortion, I felt the session was short though it lasted for more than 2o minutes! And yes, my hiccups did stop. I don’t believe in hypnosis as going into another zone or state where you are completely unaware of your surroundings but rather it is a way to fill your mind with positive images of birth and believing that you can give birth to your baby. Without interventions, and without drugs.

More soon, gotta run

My biggest investment.

I’ve officially started maternity leave at the start of the 39th week and I’m not at a point where I can’t wait to deliver..yet. I’m really looking forward to these 2, 3 god knows ?4 weeks of relaxation,trying new recipes,  food, spoiling myself rotten, spending a lot of money, going on holiday.. ok the last 2 were my imagination going. I’ve had my lunchtime escapade in a spa in town with the girls (u know what I’m talking about if you’re reading this Yati, Enah.. mel..) and I’ve stocked up on my food magazines, toiletries, ok ok more like erm, make up from my fav brand. Did you know that YSL is currently closing ALL its counters in Singapore? On the bright side, I’ve stopped my online shopping, for now.

 

I bough the Medela pump in style Metro Bag (and pump) from first few years, the best deal in town as far as I know unless you buy a pump off ebay. I’m not sure how reliable that will be though. Since its quite  a bit of money I opted for the safer option. This was my choice, of course with guidance from the guru herself. 

I’ve been also keeping abreast, no pun intended, with the must reads:

 Seen here with another must have, Palmer’s tummy butter!

And lots of hypnobirthing exercises. I love the CDs, the pregnancy insomnia has disappeared! Or it could be because I don’t have to work.. I feel so relieved cos the last few weeks were getting cpretty exhausting.

 

I’ve been contemplating on getting some one size pocket diapers from whoppeekiddies and have been religiously reading this blog. The photos of diaper fashion are too cute! But I think I’ll hold off anymore diaper purchases for now and stick to my prefolds and diaper covers as planned. I will only start pocket diapers when I need to start going out or when I need to hand over to a caregiver and need convenience. Read this previous post if you are a little lost with the cloth diapering terms.

I bought a couple of babylegs and leg warmers from this site, good service and good prices too. And they’ve just started selling cloth diapers! The prices are comparable with whoppeekiddies and I think these are the lowest prices I can find on the web.

We’re having steak for dinner tonight, an option when I’m too pooped to make anything else. I’m pulling frozen delifrance loaves from the freezer for some garlic bread and boiling some new potatoes, broccoli, carrots and cauliflower for a side simply tossed in the same garlic butter as the bread has on.

I feel a griddle pan for those grill marks is a great thing to have in the kitchen.

I made easy burger buns over the weekend for homemade burgers with my latest cheese obsession the Danish Havarti.  Its a really excellent melting cheese and its really fatty ? as in lots of oil comes out of it when you put it under the grill. Its also deliciously savoury and not stinky at the same time. We had beef burgers with cheese, wholegrain mustard, caramelized onions and chopped cornichons. The buns were easy and good! Its so hard to find nice burger buns off the shelf. The supermarket buns are always a little smushed and sad. For an alternative, if you live in Tampines, my neighbourhood bakery of choice is Beijing Confectionary at Tampines St 92, block 924. Its along the row of shops facing the primary school. They’ve got beautiful large burger buns and really nice french loaves too.

I’ll blog about the buns in the next post..

Wraps 101

Since H is not a fan of rice, nor a huge fan of pasta, there isn’t many options left for carbohydrates. Its great that there’s such a great and wide range of breads available to buy and make. There are flat breads, yeasted like naan or soft wraps and there are unleavened flatbreads like wraps, roti and tortillas. We buy our fair share of commercial breads, eventhough I don’t really like it as sometimes I think storebought bread tastes like plastic. Try buying a packet of wraps from the supermarket, take a whiff and you’ll know what I mean. It smells like the plastic it came in! Flatbreads are great when you’re short of time as a lot of times they do not need long resting or rising (if they are yeast based) times.

These were filled with sliced pan griddled chicken breasts, diced tomato, capsicum,  shredded cheddar, lettuce and a homemade tahini yogurt sauce. Just mix 1 part tahini to 5 parts yogurt, season well with salt and pepper and stir till smooth.

Picnic wraps

Makes 8

Recipe adapted from King Arthur’s Flour Baker’s Companion

2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup water

3 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, knead together all ingredients till smooth. I used my Kitchen Aid with a dough hook and kneaded at speed #3 for ten mins. The dough should be smooth and satiny. Divide into 8 small equal pieces and roll into balls. Leave to rest at least 30 mins. This period of rest makes the dough easier to roll out. Preheat a flat ungreased frying pan at low heat. Working with one piece at a time, dust work surface generously with flour and roll each piece thinly to a 6-7 inch circle. Fry for about 45 secs on one side and flip over. Small brown spots should appear on the cooked side. Place in a bowl and cover with a towel, this creates steam and softens the wrap. Repeat for remaining pieces.

Here are some tips to make soft wraps:

-knead them really well, at least 10-15 mins by hand or let the machine run

-roll them as thin as you possibly can. If they’re springing back a lot and refusing to be rolled thin, it needs to be rested a while, try again after the rest

-rolling them one at a time while there’s on the pan decreased the risk of them drying out while waiting to be put on the pan

-try to adjust the temperature of the pan such that nice light brown spots appear on the cooked side and bubbles appear on the uncooked side. If the bread puffs up, its even better as this creates 2 soft layers in your bread

-cover in a towel as soon as they’re off the pan, this steam really helps to soften them

 

Focaccia

I’m back and still counting down the days! I baked from my new bread book over the weekend. I learnt a couple of things, including the stretch and fold method, illustrated very nicely here in step by step photos.

It involved loads of olive oil, this was proofed in 1/4 cup of olive oil and the aurbergine was precooked in another load of olive oil.

The texture was amazing though, the dough soaked up the oil while proofing and made the bread super moist without any hint of oiliness on your fingers. The richness and moistness was all in the dough. It was soft and chewy and the savoury topping made the bread good on its own.

There was something wrong with my eyesight the day I took these photos, with most of my photos turning out blurred. Or perhaps its been some time since I used by 50 mm manual lens. I cut the bread into roughtly1.5 inch squares for easy munching for hungry stomachs during the evening break fast meal.

 

This bread is the best focaccia recipe I’ve tried ever, I don’t think I’ll go back to any other.

 

The recipe is available as a book preview here  go to page 164.

Lured by the Amazon monster

I finally succumbed and made my first Amazon book purchase

In the guise of buying baby books, I slipped in two baking books for my own pleasure.

So far based on my purchases, the baby would have books to read, some cooking books if she’s interested, I don’t mind sharing. And some clothes to wear but no place to sleep and no pram to be pushed in. I figured our arms will do? Other than that milk would be made by nature and bumwear looks nature friendly too though a little bewildering with all the terminology involved. I’ve doodled black and white animals to entertain her, really easy even without much talent copied from here, just dot and stripe as you wish. Flashed them at H and he was very entertained. I’ve made some homemade toys and rattles from stuff around the house and things I’ve pulled out from the craft box. Get loads of ideas here. Again I’ve tested them on H and he liked them. I’ve delved into books bought in 1982, the year that I was born, yellow and torn from my parents’ use, and realise that pasting red dots from the stationary shop onto white cards is a great cure for pregnancy insomnia. The other thing I realize about being pregnant is your mind runs like a bullet train but the body is determined to go in the opposite direction, I’m physically exhausted from vivid dreams and light sleeping patterns and many many sleep wake cycles throughout the night. Before you say it, I KNOW, ITS good practice before the baby comes!

 

On a little side note, this looks amazing. One of my new favourite blogs. Amazing photography and amazing bread, its won my heart!

More swirls and curls

I guess you’ve checked out the recipe by now. I’ve been making these rolls for years since I discovered them, the dough is a dream to work with. I made them with my bread machine like how its instructed in the recipe. After a year or two of not pulling out the machine, my bread machine stopped working.  So I stopped making these for sometime. After seeing it again on a blog, I was inspired to try the recipe this time with my trusty Kitchen Aid.

Cheery orange red pan from Ikea. I bought it with loaves of homemade pound cakes in mind, but have not gotten round to using them. I’m thinking lemon pound cakes to go with the leftover lemon cream cheese frosting I made with the cinnamon rolls.

This was how the sky looked while I was waiting for the rolls to rise.

Not much sun resulted in a bluish tinge in the photos. I solved this by zooming in from far on the rolls, this let in much more light and a warmer hue like the photos above.

 

This was how I made the rolls

1. Fix the dough hook onto your kitchen mixer

2. Mix the dry ingredients (salt, sugar, flour, yeast, Vital Wheat Gluten) at low speed for a minute. The Vital Wheat Gluten can be found at Jason’s or Cold Storage but I’ve omitted it with no change in the end product.

3. Add in the wet ingredients (water, egg, milk, vanilla) for another minute.

4. Trickle in the melted butter and knead well for 15 minutes. Cover the mixing bowl with a towel and leave to rise in a warm place for an hour.

5. Roll out as instructed and cut the rolls with floss or thread as demonstrated in this post

6. Leave to rise another hour. Bake at 170C for 20-22 mins till light brown

7. Frost while warm with the cream cheese frosting. I made the frosting with a 250g block of butter and a 250g pack of cream cheese. Beat both at room temperature for the best results. Adjust sugar to taste, I used about 1/2 – 3/4 cup, adding about a tablespoon at a time and tasting it as I went along. You’ll have about 1 1/2 cups leftover. It freezes well for future use.

Swirls and curls

Its the weekend internet slowdown, something I noticed on Sundays.. Will be back soon with more pics and my version of the recipe, have you checked it out?

This weekend’s bake is..

Bread.

Cinnamon rolls from a copycat recipe to be exact. Try this, its fantastic.

Acute rice withdrawal

Let me count the number of sandwiches or variations of bread and meat I’ve eaten in the last 5 days. There was the smoked salmon baguette sandwich, the burito, the sausage in the hotdog bun, the philly cheesesteak sandwich, the breakfast burito above, the sausage wrap.. I think I’m sandwiched and bunned out. I’ve made variations of dressings with a few ingredients: yogurt, mayonaise and dijon mustard with different herbs. I’ve rotated my different cheeses. (we have a designated cheese shelf in our fridge). I’m out of permutations.

The problem is, my rice cooker is too big for two. Its a family sized cooker and I think it cooks a minimum of one and a half to two cups. I used to have a tiny tiny pot that cooked only 3/4 of a cup which was just enough for the both of us and lunch for me the next day. If I cook rice, we’ll either have lots left over or if I cut down the amount, a layer of rice crust at the bottom of the cooker.

I’m starting to dream rice, so big rice cooker, you’re being pulled out tomorrow, I’ve never been so rice hungry.