Bread! A new field for me. I awaited this challenge eagerly and nervously - it was my first one, after all - and, going through the archives, things seemed to vary from very expensive and complicated to relatively cheap and not too impossible looking. There had been a run of the latter in the last two months and so I feared I'd be joining the ranks of the daring bakers only to have to skip out due to a bank-breaking recipe; it would just be sods law, wouldn't it? Except it wasn't expensive and didn't take 3 days or require god-like skills. It was bread. One of my favourite sorts of bread, in fact, and I was chuffed. I couldn't wait to get started, but wait I did, until a time when I knew the rolls wouldn't go to waste...
Making the rolls and the Dutch Crunch Topping
The recipe provided by the hosts used active dry yeast - and I only had instant. I know that you can convert between the two but for my first foray into bread making I figured a recipe that was meant to use instant from the get go would be a safer bet. I eventually went for this one, by King Arthur flour, partially because it used plain flour, not bread flour, and also because it seemed to be well reviewed. I also wanted a softish roll as their main use would be for the Portobello and Halloumi burgers I was making for Mum for mother's day. I know, I posted them last week! But I didn't say anything about Dutch Crunch or Daring Bakers, only that it was my first time breadmaking...
The boys wouldn't eat stuff without meat in. They had burgers in theirs, and they worked well as standard burger rolls - nice to have something a bit different, and has more of a gourmet feel, like going to GBK, let's say, than your average home burger.
Kneading is very relaxing, it turns out. The dough was wonderfully elastic and rose beautifully, then rose nicely the second time too, though the 3 inch round the recipe called for seemed very small.
However, once in the oven I ended up with nice big rolls. Actually, maybe TOO big! Next time I'd probably stretch the recipe to 10, maybe even 12 (although they varied a lot due to the fact I'm terrible at judging quantities)...
The Dutch Crunch topping also called for active dry but this time I stuck with the challenge recipe and just used 10g of instant yeast instead of the 15g of active dry. It seemed to have turned into a huge mousse when I went over to stir it after its 15 minutes resting time! I only realised halfway through making it that it made enough topping for 12 rolls and I only had 8, so I gave them all a very thick coating.
This led to some great cracking.
However, like a lot of people, I seemed to have trouble getting them to brown nicely - last I read, the general consensus seemed to be that you needed malt extract, which I may try in the future. I tried whacking up the oven to 240C at the end just for a blast of top browning heat (well, it top browned great when we were making cheesecake...) but that just browned the edges of the cracked bits.
EDIT: Audax Artifax solved it! It appears that sugar is the answer. Read his blog post to find out more
Overall, the rolls were okay. They seemed a bit dense and, despite cooking them for slightly longer than the recommended time, they still came out slightly underdone in the middle, and were very doughy, with a strong yeasty flavour.
My gut feeling is that the 3 hours of rising time the recipe called for gave the yeast too much time, resulting in that flavour, but that's just a guess. Toasting them on the hot cross bun/crumpet rack (does it have a real name?) for a short time after they were cut open helped. I was a little narked as a lot of other people seemed to make these once and get fabulous results... guess that just means I have to practice more! It's not exactly going to be a hardship to have loads of fresh, home baked bread after a lifetime of Hovis and Warburtons.
The other part of the challenge involved making a sandwich of some sort. I racked my brain for days... what HADN'T been put in a sandwich?
I travelled to Indonesia on my gap year and became a big fan of Nasi Goreng, which is fried rice, sometimes with chicken or prawns, and, usually when bought from a street stand, a nice fried egg on the top. Despite the prospect of a carbohydrate overload, this is what I planned to make in my sandwich since I decided it was sufficiently different.
Cue the sandwich making day. I had no chicken, the only rice was boil in the bag (which would have meant enough rice for 2 full meals, not the few grains I wanted in the sandwich), and I was basically screwed on the Nasi Goreng front. But I still had the Nasi Goreng paste I had managed to find in Oxford Tesco's (it's about a fifth of the size of our Exeter one but seems to have a better selection of world foods!) and set about rooting in the freezer for some alternative fillings.
Sorry, brother, I stole some of your fishfingers.
This sandwich very quickly became quite weird but is actually something I'd happily make again.
I grilled two fishfingers until almost done, then popped them in a hot frying pan.
I mashed them fairly coarsely with a fork...
And added a teaspoon of Nasi Goreng paste.
I then fried an egg with fry light in another pan, and while this was happening I spread the fish into a sort of fishcake on the lightly toasted rolls.
Then it was time for it to be topped with the fried egg (yolk squished)...
And eaten. Who'd have thought such a random combination could taste so darn good? (I don't think it's actually anywhere near as artery-clogging as the photo makes it look...)
So, thanks to our hosts for a challenge that was great fun and introduced me to the world of bread making! Also, I now know that if I need some stress relief at uni, I think that kneading bread might be the way to go...
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