Flour and Water

I am fascinated with bread and the wonders of how flour and water combined together can give different flavors and textures.

Just recently, I was very fortunate to have been given the chance to have a day of bread baking training with La Madre Bakery’s Owners. One of our Artisinal bread suppliers in the hotel. Working with starters would be one of the things that is taught in pastry school of course but spending a day with them actually polished off a lot of my bread baking techniques. Even gave us a couple of hundred grams of their 40 year old rye starter. I of course am still attempting to keep it alive up to this point feeding it every other day with “organic” rye flour ( a very expensive feed... costs me $6 for 750g of it!).

Since then, I have tried to make a few loaves of bread from it. I made a sourdough loaf of which I shaped into a tapered batard and proofed it in a banneton. Bannetons are bentwood willow baskets that are used to shape breads.




Like making 8 kilos of puff pastry at work is not enough to satiate my baking craving, I have also decided to make croissants at home. Devoid of the comforts of a commercial pastry kitchen of course where I have a whole room of refrigerator space and a sheeter to roll my dough with a push of a button and a turn of a lever. I almost regretted the moment I even thought of making these breakfast pastries as I was doing my second turn using my small wooden rolling pin on my small kitchen countertop. Flour all over the floor and a few on the carpet as well. I used the recipe on a book a got a long time ago from an American baker. A very popular one in Los Angeles called the La Brea Bakery and one I truly admire. It says the recipe make large croissants. Indeed it was big, very big! I used my starter as part of my detrempe ( the dough in making the pastry). I was happy with the flavor, texture, crust and shape of the croissant I made. Soft crumb inside, flakey layers of pastry and blistered crust! I will however next time definitely make it twice smaller. These ones are huge really huge!

The Bagel. Of all the breads that I made, this one actually got stuck on me. Every time i feed my starter I would actually use half of it to make a small batch of bagel. It took me three tries to make the perfect bagel that well... can make me happy. I would mix the dough on day one, retard it overnight then cook it and bake it the next day. The first few tries, I followed the recipe which instructed to cook the bagel right after it has been retarded. It came out to be a very heavy bagel. The second time around, I proofed it at room temperature. Did not make that much of a difference. Winter is not a very ideal temperature to make breads I realized, not like in Asia where my bread just naturally grows just putting it on a counter top. So I made a makeshift proof box by putting a pot of boiled hot water on the oven floor, my tray of bagels on the second level then closing the door tight. That kept the environment warm and moist activating the yeast quicker than it would be on normal room temperature. The result is an evenly spaced crumb. Boiling the bagel in water gave the crust a chewy texture. Shaping is equally important as well. Too big a hole will give you donut looking bagels, to small and it will look like a navel of a baby’s tummy.



This is so far as my baking adventure has gone. Perhaps on another day, I’ll mix flour and water again.

The champagne that I like

It's funny, but since my initiation to the wonderful world of spirits, liquors, wine and the bubblies, I have not ben exactly a fan of Champagne. You see, my preference is vodka and red wine. But that's not to say I don't dabble in having a pint then and again.

I wonder if it was the reputation of Champagne... for the rich and famous, expensive (usually not within my budget range), and snobbish. It's not me at all. But there is indeed much to learn about Champagne, especially after I've read a few articles about it. The quality of the Champagne compared to artificially carbonating a wine is definitely obvious, since we are comparing the opposite ends of the scale. After a tour in a winery in France (not in Champagne though) I learned a lot about how Champagne, and similar bubblies are produced painstakingly using the traditional method. I was impressed!

Sadly, I am probably not just built to prefer champagne over a nice bottle of red. I have tasted some, like Veuve & Clicquot's Brut Yellow Label; Moet Chandon's Brut Rose, maybe the Brut NV too (but i don't pay attention much, in my earlier days and with my interest not as developed as now), and there are those that have been poured out for me and I don't know what it was - although it was a bubbly. They were ok. While typically, Champagne excites, I learned that the bubbles just get to my head faster than I could say hello and goodbye.

But that was until last week. A friend's birthday eventually introduced me to a bottle that has probably put Champagne on my preferred list of drinks too. Although more expensive than my wines, beers, or cocktails, this one was a keeper. My first sip of that Champagne awakened my senses. And I just want to keep tasting it again and again, and for every sip, seems like there's something new to discover about the drink.

It was crisp, and refreshingly light in the palate. No strong musky scent here, or the weight of the sweet that I sometimes taste in other bubblies. And surprisingly, this one was creamy. Something i wouldn't have expected in a Champagne. Flavors, of honey yes, but vanilla ice cream?  This is Ruinart Blanc de Blanc.

Yes, maybe now I can choose to drink champagne, sometimes.