While having somewhat of a culinary background in regards to cooking meals, I have never been able to properly bake. Either the lack of time or motivation, it is a skill that I never got round to picking up. This all changes with the boredom and time that the COVID 19 quarantine brings. With this newfound time I am able to explore some different skills and activities, expanding my experience and learning something new in a time of stress and uncertainty.
PLAN:
At first, I would plan to make bread and the one place to start is by choosing a recipe to follow so that I can organize the resources at my disposal. To do this I surfed the internet, looking for recipes and seeing which one would fit my needs. I eventually found one that was relatively basic (since I don’t want to start experimenting yet). The Recipe was just a simple loaf of white bread with the link of: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/basic-homemade-bread/
Once I found the recipe, I would go on to collect all the ingredients that I could find. The only ingredient that was missing (and which I could not get because of the curfew) was instant yeast. I had to replace this with a dry yeast that would end up becoming a large variable in deciding the outcome of the bread.
My baking setup
Action:
Once it was time to bake the bread I made sure to clean all the surfaces and kitchenware that I would use to ensure that no bacteria and dirt could ruin my creation. I followed the recipe all through the steps (while making a bit of a mess). The kneading would prove to be quite difficult as the mass of dough would be very sticky and dense. With the addition of flour over time, the dough would begin to form into a sphere and would be ready to let rise in a bowl with a damp towel on top. After letting it rise and kneading it again, it was quite evident that the yeast was not ideal for baking bread. Regardless of the poor rising in the bread, I put it into the oven and baked it until it was ready to take out (while it also provided a nice smell).
The bread being baked in the oven
End result:
By the definition of bread, it was bread. By the definition of good taste, it did not taste good. The bread was a bit too bland which could be a result of not adding enough sugar and salt to the mixture. In addition to this, the bread ended up quite dense and was similar to a soggy rock. This would have been a result of using a different yeast which, did not ferment as much as I would want, resulting in a bread that doesn’t have much of an interior “fluff”. Regardless, I feel that this is a good start and learning experience for the future of my baking attempts.
The final result