focaccia

Lately, I have been having fun with my Hitachi bread machine. It is multi-purpose and can be used to bake bread, knead dough, bake cakes and make jam.

I have to date used my bread machine to bake bread, bake cakes and make strawberry jam. I have found that cakes baked in an oven are softer than cakes baked in a bread machine. As such, other than one attempt at baking a chocolate cake using my bread machine, I have not used the bread machine for this purpose since.

All this while, when I knead dough to be baked in an oven, I have been doing the kneading manually. As I am not an expert at kneading dough (I have not gotten the hang of it yet!), I have decided to try the dough function in my bread machine to make focaccia... and I am pleased with the results.

Ingredients

1 cup lukewarm water
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp garlic (chopped)
1/2 tbsp dried rosemary leaves
1/2 tbsp dried thyme leaves
3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 tsp instant dry yeast
2 tbsp olive oil (topping)
1 tsp dried rosemary leaves (topping)
1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves (topping)

Method

1. Pour the water into the bucket of the breadmaker.

2. Add the olive oil, salt, chopped garlic, dried rosemary leaves and dried thyme leaves.

3. Add the bread flour, making sure that the flour covers the liquid.

4. Add the yeast.

5. Place the bucket in the breadmaker and set to "dough" function. Press "start".

6. When the dough cycle has been completed, remove the dough and place the dough on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

7. Spread out the dough using your hands to fill almost the entire baking pan.

8. Cover the dough with a moist cloth and leave the dough to rise for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

9. Use your fingers to dimple the dough every inch or so.

10. Brush the top of the dough with 2 tbsp olive oil and sprinkle the dried rosemary leaves and dried thyme leaves.

11. Bake in an oven preheated to 200 degrees celsius for 20 to 25 minutes.

Tip

If you are baking the focaccia in advance of a party and intend to warm up the focaccia when the guests have arrived, bake the focaccia in the oven for 20 minutes instead of 25 minutes. The foaccia will be lightly browned (as can be seen in the photograph at the top of this post). When your guests have arrived, warm up the focaccia in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for 5 minutes.

easy porridge

I used to buy the Pigeon powdered cream soup to prepare easy soup for Princess. I have now discovered another use for this.

I add two satchets of the powdered cream soup to the porridge that I cook for Princess. It gives flavour to the porridge. Before you gasp in horror... no worries - according to the packaging on the box, there are no artificial flavouring, etc (read: "MSG"?) added.

I have a Takahi porridge cum rice cooker that I use to cook porridge for Princess. What I like about this is that there are two porridge buttons - regular porridge and baby porridge. My guess is that if I select "baby porridge", the cooking time is longer?

INGREDIENTS

500ml water or stock - I boil my own stock using assorted vegetables, meat and fish

2 tbsp rice - I use a mixture of white rice and brown rice as Princess is not used to totally brown rice yet

2 satchets Pigeon powdered cream soup

1/2 carrot - cut into tiny pieces

1/2 stick celery - cut into tiny pieces

1 dried Shitake mushroom - soaked till soft and cut into tiny pieces

1 piece pork rib - this is not to be eaten - I add the pork rib to give additional flavour to the porridge

light sauce - to taste

METHOD

1. Add all the ingredients together (except the light sauce) and cook the porridge.

2. Stir the porridge every now and then and add more water/stock if need be.

3. When the porridge is about done and you have the desired consistency, taste the porridge and add a little light sauce (to taste) if required.

I am back!

I have not been blogging for a while. It is not because I have disappeared from cyberspace. Rather, my oven had decided to call it a day.

I have finally gotten round to buying a new oven! It is a Techno oven.

I have done two test bakes so far and used the oven several times to warm up food.

The verdict from the test bake? The oven needs a bit more time to be seasoned for the temperature to stabilise. I cannot wait to come up with delicious baked creations again!