Once you got used to baking bread, you will become obsessed with it. Previously, I use my bread maker to bake bread but found that the sides tend to get too burnt eventhough I had set it to ‘light crust’. The other thing I dislike about baking bread is how much vegetable shortening I need to make it. All my previous recipes call for vegetable shortening and as you may have read, these trans fat is bad for our hearts.
Then, Erina of CookingIsland.net (which is an online cooking ingredients shop, you can order your stuffs and have it delivered to your home in Malaysia) gave me some marvellous ideas and sold me a few types of bread flour. (no this is not a post sponsored by anyone)
Erina told me that baking bread with butter will yield a softer texture. I also replace the vegetable shortening with some olive oil as well.
Now, I am so good with baking bread, I can churn up anything I imagine. The above is one which has gone nutty. I have all these nuts in my fridge and wanted to get rid of them. So, I piled the walnuts, flaxseed, sesame seed, sunflower seeds, pumkin seed and even poppy seed too.
Baking bread actually involve just a few steps. Mixing the dough, let it stand, punching out the air, shape and leave to stand for another few minutes and into the oven.
On the day I baked these breads, my son has a pot luck party. So, I baked the bread in the muffin cups to make them into buns and he brought it along in the convenient and cute cases.
You may need a few trials and errors to get the texture right but trust me, all homemade breads are edible and delicious even if you failed. They are good for munching, dunking into soup or just to snack on.
Find out from Erina what you need to add into your bread flour to make it softer. Normally, she recommended to me bread improver which is a kind of wheat protein. I don’t have a recipe because I normally depend on the recipe given along with the bread flour. Bread making involves just flour, oil, a little salt and sugar, yeast, some water or milk and bread improver.
This is definately a healthy bread madam. Really healthy!!! Off course, also yummy with so many different types of seeds and nuts. Making me hungry now. Tomorrow I am going to make a few loafs of english bread and put them in the freezer for me to consume next week. Don’t have time to bake daily. So, nowadays I bake during the weekend and keep them in the freezer. Wanna ‘kiam pooi’. hehehe……….. Since now my sister wanna join me, so dinner time, me and my sister will only have bread with some fillings and milk. That’s all. hehehe…. getting ai sui and hiau liau. 🙂
Nothing beats the smell of freshly home-baked bread. Nice little bread in muffin cups…good idea..Bread over the counter nowadays taste bland and dry. The nutty ones with high fibre are quite expensive. I like to make my own pita bread. The ones in hypermarket taste yuk!
the bread looks scrumptious and healthy at the same time.. all the nuts there!
Woow, home made bread, very healty!!! especially with those nuts and grain.
OMIGOSHHHHH… I’m going nutty with the picts! Dang, I’m hungry again… :’-( Going to put on weight just gawking at all the picts! Oh… beautiful & yummy picts and nice webpage layout!
pixen
What pretty pics! I normally bake my bread in a breadmaker (cheat tactic but nice-smelling results hehe). Will try throwing in loads of nuts into it and see how it turns out. Then again, in your case, the nuts are on the surface, right?
Your bread looks gorgeous! You make me hungry… Nothing’s better than homemade bread!