Lavender Yogurt Bread

Breads are staple. But rice is not for me. I need to have my daily bread, but I don't have to take rice to survive. That's me. I've been using 吴宝春金牌土司 as my bread base for most of the breads I baked in the evening. It's the easiest bread I've done so far and the usual result is a soft bread.

With more time during the weekend, I would like to explore other bread recipes, especially those that required some preparation the night before. This Lavender Yogurt bread from Alex Goh's "The Art of Making Bread" is one of those recipe which required to prepare an "old dough" the day before. It was supposed to let it rest 24-48hours, but I used it within 12hours. Hmm...now I wondered what is the difference between an "old dough" vs a "preferment".

The bread was really very soft after baking. It is fluffy and light. The lavender smell filled the air when baking. Enjoy this as a sandwich or on its own.

Recipe for Lavender Yogurt Bread, adapted from "The Art of Making Bread" 无添加剂面包 by Alex Goh.
(Makes 2 regular loaves)

Ingredients:

Laomian老面
100g Bread flour
70g Ice cold water
2g Instant Yeast

1. Put the flour and yeast into a bowl. Add cold water and mix to form a dough.
2. Cover with cling wrap and leave to ferment for 4 hours. (I ferment mine for 2 hours only)
3. Remove the fermented dough from the bowl, place it into plastic container and press to degas it. Cover with cling wrap, keep it in the refrigerator for 24-48hours.
4. If not use within 48hours, divide it into required weight, wrap it with plastic bag and keep it in the freezer. Use it within 30 days. 
5. Before using, remove from the freezer, leave it at room temperature and let it thaw for 30mins.

Main dough

400g Bread flour

100g Plain flour

8g Instant yeast

1 tbsp (12g) Dried lavender

80g Honey
8g Salt
170g Laomian (refer to the top)
50g Cold eggs
150g Cold water (total weight of eggs and water should equate to 200g as sometimes, the eggs maybe heavier and you can use them all.)
100g Plain yogurt
80g Unsalted butter

Method:

1. Put all the ingredients except butter, in the same order, in a mixing bowl. Using a dough hook, knead to form a dough.
2. Add butter and knead until smooth and elastic. Leave to ferment for 45mins.

3. Divide the dough into 8 portions and mould them round. Leave it to rest for 15mins.
4. Flatten the dough, then make 3 fold. Flatten lightly and roll it up like swiss roll.

5. Put the dough into the rectangular regular loaf pan.

6. Leave it to proof for 45mins.
7. Meanwhile, heat up the oven to 220C.
8. Bake at 220C on the lowest rack for 23mins. Tent the bread after 10mins if the top turns dark.

9. Remove from the loaf pan immediately after baking. Cool completely before slicing.

10. Enjoy with butter.

A week of simple bakes

This week started with an order of Nutella cupcakes for my colleague, and some simple bakes. In fact, there was a variety of bakes - cupcakes, buns, cake and macarons!

My colleague bought a small tub of Nutella previously and I volunteered to bake Nutella cupcakes for her, and used up the whole tub!


Then as I was on half day leave on Wednesday afternoon to pack my printed recipes etc, I already baked some sweet buns I learnt from my previous California Style Baking. Instead of adding mixed cherries to the dough, I added raisins, orange peels and dried tomatoes, and chocolate chips. Then topped it with some sweet pastry dough. The overall taste was rather good, but the bread wasn't soft was expected. Luckily the sweet pastry top masked out the toughness of the buns!



Feeling like baking some yogurt cake, I decided to try Sugar Inc's Strawberry Yogurt Cake. This was from her freebies page (provided you sign up for her newsletter). However, instead of using strawberry, I used a mixed fruit yogurt. The cake turned out to be a tad too sweet for me. Maybe it was because I was using a normal yogurt rather than a low fat one. However, my colleagues liked them and so do my hb!



Finally, I decided to try a macaron recipe from this site where my friend sent it to me. I'm so glad that I heed her advice to try this.


I was really thrilled when the feet showed up, but followed by cracks at the top. Then I realised I've placed my rack too high up, causing it to crack so terribly. The second batch was better. At least, most of them were nice and smooth. This recipe will be a keeper for me. And since I've got myself new silpat mats all the more, I will bake more macarons!

Low Fat Orange Yogurt Cake

I wanted to bake some simple cakes using my low fat yogurt. The yogurt was in my fridge for quite a while. No matter what, I wanted to finish up the yogurt before I had to discard it when it expired. Previously, I had done a modified version of the Orange Yogurt Cake from HHB's recipe. So this time, I followed this same recipe to the dot. Actually not really, I reduced the sugar to 150g and replace vanilla essence with orange extract. The end result? Nice and fragrant orange butter cake. But I suspected I might have overbaked it as it was slightly too dry.

When I poured the batter into the tin, it was like so shallow. However, after it was baked, it sort of expanded and "exploded", making it real high! It looked pretty nice too!

Orange Yogurt Cake

I was told by Yuri that Greek Yogurt taste something like sour cream and creamier than normal yogurt. Since I love sour creams in my cakes, I decided to buy the Greek Yogurt and start baking yogurt-related cakes. I found this not-so-difficult recipe from Happy Home Baking-Low Fat Orange Yogurt Cake. As it's not a low fat yogurt being used, it's actually Orange Yogurt Cake for me.

I bought a bundt pan and can't wait to use it. So I baked this recipe on a bundt pan. It sure looked good though! The smell of orange that filled the kitchen was really wonderful! I loved the look and the smell of the cake, though I have not tried it yet. I hope it will be good...