Tangzhong Milk Bread

Ahoy, bread-making time! This month I've been making a lot of bread. I attempted to make the Asian milk bread with tangzhong, and it turned out super duper fluffy! This will probably be the go-to recipe for future potlucks and parties. It can be found here. I am now embarrassed with about 90% of the bread I've made in the past that I've shared with people.

In other news, I've become irritated with recipe posts in which there are a ton of pictures of the food and not the process. Pictures of the dough, consistency of dough, size of pan, etc. are fine and dandy, but numerous glossy pictures of the finished product, from various angles, have become irksome. There's something annoying about having to scroll an entire page through pretty but useless photos before discovering a recipe, and then scrolling another page to find the oven temperature and baking time. Alas, what to do about all my previous blog posts in which I posted such images?! Rest assured future images will be more wisely chosen.

My Notes

• I've made this recipe three times so far, each time with alterations because ... well, that's what I do, with limited ingredients.
• Tangzhong - milk and flour as specified! I added some cinnamon as the mixture was cooking. You want to get a gruel-type consistency. While it cools, a skin starts to form and the gruel starts drying up. So, it is wise to scoop everything into a blob that takes up minimum pot surface area, so later you don't have half your tangzhong dried onto the edges of the pan.
• Ingredient substitutions, to use up stuff in the house:
• About 5 cups of flour - Not really sure how much. It just has to feel like a dense marshmallow, and squishy
• Soy powder instead of milk powder
• 1/2 cup milk instead of half and half
• 4 tbsp oil instead of butter
• Yeast! 12 g active dry yeast, mixed with about 30 ml of above-body-temperature water (microwaved)
• Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, chopped dried apricot!
• Method changes:
• Mix all the liquid with two cups of flour prior to adding the yeast mixture
• Continue adding 2 cups of flour and mix
• Add the tangzhong and another cup of flour, mixing here and there
• At this point, the dough should be kneaded by hand. Keep adding handfuls of flour and kneading until you get a pliable, almost-wet, squishy dough that feels like thick marshmallow or play-doh or what I imagine hot taffy to feel like. When you poke it gently, the dough should spring back
• Let sit in hot sweltering summer heat until doubled in size. Dough should be pliable, dry enough to not stick to the bowl, but wet enough to stick slightly to your hands. It is nice and squishy
• Make into rolls or logs or braids and let re-rise for 30 mins
• Egg wash! I have this nifty egg crystal package that I got from the IFT Expo last summer. I never need more than half an egg for egg wash, and now, I can reconstitute exactly half an egg! Just add water! What a wonderful world. Outside of using the crystals for egg washes though, I don't think it is cost-effective for me, as I do have access to fresh eggs during most of my waking hours. However, these crystals non-perishable, non-crushable, and therefore super for camping, the military, etc. So, huzzah!
• Pans. I like using smaller pans because it makes my buns look big. Hehe. Well, tall. I fit all of the dough into what looks like an 8x8 glass pan. Glass is a nice material for bread, as are leftover Chipotle burrito bowl lids (but I don't have anymore of those! No more free Chipotle!)
• Rolls (say, 8 rolls) are better in a square pan like this because the middle doesn't end up slightly raw. In a loaf pan (which I will acquire someday!), a loaf would be pretty nice

After doubling in size

After second rise (30 minutes)

Bread with almost-the-same recipe but no tangzhong, egg crystals instead of eggs, and powdered milk and water instead of milk. Oh, and no sugar because I forgot. Note how flat it is :( There is sesame on it, though. It tasted much denser and dry and ... sort of like bland pizza dough. The dough while kneading was also way denser and felt more like a cookie dough than a bread dough (no spring! no squish!).

And finally, a note about the direction of this blog. In the past year, I've had so many food experiences, but I haven't had time to update! I've also started to become somewhat embarrassed at taking pictures at public gatherings/meals, given my point-and-shoot camera (while everyone else is using their smartphones-with-flash or their fancy DSLR camera with varying lenses). Finally, food blogging, or at least, posting pictures of food with captions and descriptions, has become so pedestrian. Everyone does it now. Instagram, hashtags, Facebook brunches with hundreds of Likes...

What differentiates my food life from everyone else's? Why read a 1000-word essay and cooking process when you can scroll through a delicious avocado burger? "I did it before it was cool" is neither a decent response nor constructive. I get a much larger readership if I post one HoverZoom-able picture on Facebook or Imgur, and much more instant gratification.

Yet at the same time, how many people can say that they maintain an entire food website!

Well, now that I've graduated, a few things I'd like to do include:

1. Actually making my own website for general real-life use
2. Somehow incorporating the blog into my website, or at least, re-designing the entire layout of the blog. An issue is that many previous posts have been terribly formatted, with Images and Words (hehe, Dream Theater) running amok. Oh, and numerous tags. Augh!
3. Deciding whether the blog is word-focused or picture-focused. I'd like to think that I contribute more to the world via stories about cooking and culture, rather than pictures of food, but pictures are quite attention-grabbing. The site layout will therefore probably reflect this.
4. Determining whether this blog will be a blog for all my thoughts, or merely food-centric. This also depends on the creation of my actual website.

"Real People" Dinner

At a Discussion Dinner for my program, I was making a point and rambled that we first pilot test our food/solutions in our lab, and then, after approval, "give the test to real people." This phrase became the butt of a handful of jokes later in the discussion, and I am now ostensibly the lab assistant of a lab that has "non-real" people. On a related note, AK distinguishes "real people" food and lodging from college kid living conditions. "Real people", for example, have vapid paintings on their walls, and don't eat ramen-with-poached-egg. In a clutter of spontaneity and thoughtful planning, we managed to have a remarkably posh "real people" dinner on the porch of his house, complete with neither tablecloth nor napkin. Actually, apart from the food and sunset, everything else was rather "college kid"-style (including Christmas lights). However, the food is the only thing that matters and it's neat choosing not to pay for perfect plating and swanky music.

Unfortunately, as is frequently the case this summer, I didn't have my camera, so these phone pictures will have to suffice.

The Menu

Not-Crusty-Enough Baguette with Camembert

8 Oysters (4 Chesapeake, 4 other)

Ribeye Steak with Mushrooms and Steamed, Buttered Spinach

The Oysters

Oysters are really expensive to order at restaurants. At Simeon's, oysters are $37.50/dozen (I think). At Wegmans, however, they are only $1. Although this sounds perfectly ridiculous (because an entire box of mac and cheese is $1), consider ordering 6 cooked-from-frozen mozarella sticks for $7.99+tax+tip from a generic casual-style restaurant. And they revel in it.

The woman at the Wegmans seafood counter was very nice and explained to us that one of the oyster types was more briny than the other. However, I don't remember which was the more briny one, and I don't remember the name of the other oyster type either. Suffice it to say that 4 of the oysters looked more textured and wavy while the other 4 looked neat and tidy. '50s conservative, vs. '60s whoot-whoot, if you will. Although the two types of oysters came in different nets, I ended up mixing them due to a memory lapse. In another memory lapse, I put the oysters in the freezer, only to realize 20 minutes later that oysters should probably not be frozen because the oysters were still alive (maybe?) and that frozen scallops (and other seafood) have a terrible texture, so why not oysters? So, they were promptly moved to the fridge.

However, obtaining oysters is not the main problem. Opening them is. I didn't see the point of purchasing a $20 oyster opener, and I was confident that we could pry them open somehow. The woman at the counter suggested using a screwdriver. She also said that legally speaking, she could only tell us to eat them cooked. I found this humourous.

We tried using a butter knife and another sharp knife to pry open the oysters, before AK found that a 3/8-inch drill-bit (flat) works perfectly as an oyster opener! You gently poke the drill-bit between the bottom (corner?) of the oyster, and then gingerly wiggle the drill-bit around the perimeter of the oyster.

After a short amount of time (much less than the time taken to get to a restaurant, order food, and wait for food), we had our oysters! They sat in the fridge on ice, covered with a plate, for about an hour until we ate them.

The camembert was good because the rind was bland. That's probably not how it's supposed to be, but is agreeable towards my preferences. The steak was good. There were chunks of fat in it, and little blobs of mushroom and garlic. The spinach was made by steaming in this collapsible colander/steamer (like this), which I think is super nifty device!

This was so fun!

Baguettes (from May)

After Finals were over, I decided to make bread the night before I moved out. Packing? Psh, I could do that later. (But it actually turns out that I can just throw all my stuff into canvas bags).

I decided to make baguettes because I don't like turning the oven up to a high temperature at home, whereas it's fine in my dorm's kitchen where the heat doesn't cling onto you like duct tape. I also really love baguettes. All day every day.



Although these aren't exactly authentic because they're kind of dense...I think they pass. I don't remember exactly what recipe I used, and now I can't find it online, but I think it was this:
10 g active dry yeast
680g flour? Some mix of white and whole wheat
330 ml water?
Some salt...

I had to knead the dough for at least 10 minutes before everything was incorporated. Halfway through, I started to believe that there wasn't enough water (because it was pretty floury) but after a lot of kneading, the dough becomes really hydrated and sticky.

I think I let it sit for 1.5 h? Then I formed the baguettes, and let it sit for another hour. It is unfortunate that I don't remember the steps...

After rising, they go in the preheated oven with a metal container of about 50 ml water that will create a lot of steam. The steam in the oven emulates conventional baguette ovens that have steam injected in during baking. Refer to here to learn why steam helps with crust formation.

I liked this so much I gave some to my GA, SP's mum, and friends. It needs bigger holes though (too dense and not as chewy at the moment).

Coconut Bread!

One year later. 
I am now very confident when baking with yeast. It's simple! Fun! I haven't bought bread in a year. This is weird because I used to go through a loaf of sliced bread a week.
Today I made coconut buns without following a specific recpie. It just looked right. I wish Algorithms were this easy. I've read that baking bread has to be very exact, but I think I use more intuition than measurement when I make successful bread. Perhaps I'm just not very particular about my bread?



The recipe goes something like this:

Ingredients
750 g flour (I used 650 g white flour, 100 g whole wheat flour)
20 g active dry yeast
100-150 ml whipping cream (can possibly substitute with cow or coconut milk)
100-150 ml water (not really sure)
Unsweetened shreds of 1 actual coconut (see note below)
100 g white sugar (make it 200 g if you like sweet buns)

Note: My mum bought a coconut and my sister and I drank the coconut juice. After throwing the coconut (in a plastic bag) onto a brick repeatedly until it cracked, we cut up the flesh into bite-sized chunks, and blended it with 2 cups of warm water (60 degrees C?). After straining the slurry, we ended up with some delicious fatty coconut milk and a lot of shredded coconut. The coconut milk separated in the fridge, and it seems sensible to make coconut buns with the coconut milk, but I had to use up the whipping cream that had been in the freezer for a while. The coconut milk will probably be used for curry tomorrow.

Method

1. Microwave water for 15-30 seconds, or until it feels a bit warmer than finger temperature.
2. Mix everything except coconut shreds together in an enormous bowl.
3. Knead for some 10 minutes. At first, your situation will seem hopeless as there does not seem to be enough liquid, and flour will start sticking to the side of your bowl. After a few minutes of vigorous kneading, however, you will realize that the dough ball has actually become sticky! Now, it will suck up all that flour!
4. Throw in coconut shreds. They add a bit of moisture so you might want to throw in some more flour too.
5. Leave to rest (in a plastic bag if you want) for 2 hours. If it's a bit chilly indoors, you can leave it in your car. If you do not have a car, leaving it out for 2-3 hours is fine.
6. Scoop out lumps of dough, roll (without squeezing too hard), and put onto a foil-lined baking sheet. The bread I make apparently never sticks to foil after it's done baking, which is pretty neat. You can keep the balls of dough about 1 cm apart from each other if you want the buns to touch. If you don't want them to touch, keep them 5 cm apart.
7. Let rise for 1 hour.
8. Paint on some coconut milk and sprinkle more coconut/sugar/sesame/whatever on top.
9. Stick a small container of water (50 ml) on the bottom rack of oven. This makes steam.
10. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes in an unpreheated oven, middle rack.

Results

SO FLUFFY!! Look at the wonderful crumb!



My mum said it rivals the buns sold at the Asian supermarket nearby. Or, you know, in those Chinese bakeries in Chinatown.



Here is a bun. It is beautiful.



Had a cookie butter (from Trader Joe's) sandwich. You can taste a hint of coconut texture in every bite. The bun is not very sweet, which is fine.

Challah!

Finally, I am baking challah, which has been on my cooking list since the summer! Although I'm not a huge fan of it, my mum loves challah because it's so airy. 

I used this recipe but I only used 3 eggs in the dough (and added water to make up for the liquid volume of the 4th egg). Unfortunately, I only used up about 6 cups of flour (instead of the 8 specified in the recipe) before my dough got doughy. While kneading, though, the dough would get increasingly sticky, so I threw in approximately another half of a cup of flour before letting it rise. 

Instead of using plastic wrap, I just put the bowls of dough in previously-used (but clean) plastic bags. The dough never touches the plastic bags if you leave enough space, and once you remove the plastic bags and allow their to air dry, you can reuse these bags for this or other purposes. This is better for the environment. Yes, the bread was rising on the carpet of my bedroom upstairs because that's where there is the most sunlight/heat during the day.

The first 1-h rise resulted in beautifully doubled-in-size dough! The second 0.5-h rise also culminated in round poofy blobs, which I subsequently split into long noodles and braided. I used 6 noodles per loaf (braiding the outer-most noodle over 3 consecutive noodles, alternating between left and right) and although the lengths of the noodles weren't exactly the same, all I had to do was tuck the leftover noodles into/under the loaf. 

Then, I brushed the loaves with egg wash.

The third rise of the loaves took way longer than the recommended 1 h, because by this time, the afternoon sunlight had disappeared. Instead, I let them rise for about 1.75 h, brushed them with another coat of egg wash, and threw them into the half preheated oven for half an hour. I then let it sit in the (off) oven for about 10 minutes before pulling out a smashing crusty loaf! My mum tried to trick my dad into thinking it was store-bought, but that failed because the bread was still warm. However, everyone thought it looked pretty.

My sister was quite excited and decided to ruin my picture. On the other hand, the crust was a bit thick for conventional liking (though I enjoyed it), but the crumb was super soft and airy! Yes, it looks like bread! It pulls like bread! It is bread!

Croissants & Pain Au Chocolats

How do I cook badly? Let me count the ways.
1. Age 11: The first time I made potato/carrot pancakes, I added way too little oil. Result? No dinner and a super dirty frying pan.
2. Age 18: I thought it'd be smart to make lime pie filling with all aspartame/sucralose and no sugar. Of course, nothing set, and everything tasted metallicky and nauseating.
3. Age 14: I made a red currant tart without a recipe, and I recall only putting in a few teaspoons of sugar (resulting in a tremendously sour tart that everyone else pretended to enjoy).
4. Age 14: Oh, and that apple pie made with semi-rehydrated dried apple.
5. Age 14: Nutella cookies that were as hard as hardtack and as strong as steel. Those days...
6. Age 15(?): Silken tofu chocolate pudding, which turned into a watery drink instead.
7. Age 13: Bread. Everyone else in Food Tech managed to get risen loaves, while SC and I were left with hardtack studded with pistachios, even though we all used the same yeast. This bread problem also came up last week.

The common element in these failures is that after just one or two tries, I succeeded. So, I knew that, at some point or another, I was going to be able to work with yeast, and make croissants. Croissants are just extremely time-consuming and also really time-dependent. It's like performing a Western blot (but more fun)! Unfortunately, out of all dessert items, SP chooses to like pain au chocolats ("chocolate bread", which is a rectangle of croissant dough with a stick or two of chocolate in the middle), and he said he'd do anything for me if I made these for him for his birthday. And who wouldn't be willing to exchange pain au chocolats for an electric broccoli trimmer with detachable non-electric cauliflower trimmer[start at 2:04]?
The recipe I used initially was this French one. After failing with it twice, I did some research and found an English recipe written by a French guy, Louis la Vache, who used tremendous detail and stressed the importance in all these fridge times. However, I also found a really quick croissant recipe that I will try later (if I can find it!) because it looks MUCH less time-consuming than the 12-hour process I finally followed.
Two months ago, I attempted to make croissants with yeast, and the dough wouldn't rise (the dough was in the sun, perhaps 20-30 degrees C for over 4 hours). Despite the fact that the yeast were obviously dead (and I should've just made tortillas instead). I figured I should go ahead and make the croissants with the unleavened dough, and I got cute little croissants whose hardness matched a 7 on the Mohs scale. Heh, at least the layering idea worked - vital for photogenic and flaky croissants.

A few days later, I decided to make them again. Unfortunately, I reduced all the fridge times (seeing as I really didn't understand that the dough actually RISES while in the fridge!). I scaled down the recipe, even though the yeast to flour ratio is probably not linear, and also probably accidentally killed off half my yeast with the too-hot milk. The dough rose a bit, but it was insignificant compared to the dough my mum was using to make Chinese steamed buns - mantou (馒头)! The butter kept oozing out of the too-thin layers, and everything was just messy. Either way, these failures were eaten and enjoyed, slightly (more avidly by my sister, who likes anything buttery).

So, after the past week of buying new yeast, successfully making bread twice, and healing from the failed croissant scars, I set to make croissants and pain au chocolats for SP, this time using une recette de Louis la Vache.

I only used 7 g of yeast (1 package) because not only do I have a small bowl, but I also didn't want to have another failure. I also used a lot more flour than expected! These are just what I did, and I would prefer to go back to the original recipe when making these again.

Ingredients I used:

1 tbsp white flour
1 stick butter

2.5 c white flour (+ more... I might've used 3 - I just kept adding tbsp by tbsp)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp granulated sugar
7 g (1 sachet) yeast
1/8 c 30 degree C water
1 c 30 degree C milk

1 egg yolk
2 tbsp water

Notes on the Method:
1. The dough rises in the fridge! This was the biggest surprise, because I didn't think that yeast would be so active at 4 degrees C. This means that for the least usage of energy, the croissants would be best made in the winter, when I can leave the dough to rise outside in the cold (and after baking, the oven can be let open to keep me warm)! Look at that risen dough!
2. The first dough rise was about 70 minutes. The second was about an hour, and the third was 5 hours. Then, they were rolled out, and that dough was chilled for 15 minutes (just so that rolling it would be easier - so the butter wouldn't melt onto my hands or table). Then, the rolled-up croissants/pains were left at room temperature for 1 hour to rise a bit more. They actually rose (unlike what I had before, pictured below).

I wanted the croissants to be baked by midnight, and I started kind of late in the day, so I was operating on a tight schedule! They actually started baking at 10:00pm, and I was on my way to SP's place at 10:30pm! 12 hours on the dot (or maybe I started at 11am...)!

3. I used a plastic bag instead of plastic wrap because the bag is reusable. I also mixed the butter and flour in a plastic container, which resulted in broken blobs of butter on the dough, which wasn't a huge deterrent, but my technique could definitely be improved.

4. I used a paper towel instead of a tea towel because I don't have clean towels :(. The damp paper towel didn't stick too much to the dough, especially if you pull it off slowly and carefully. Excellent.

5. The butter was generally too warm, and probably fell into chunks while I was rolling. The table got a bit buttery. I used my room's desk (cleaned it beforehand, but I feel like I should've done an ethanol cleaning yesterday) because there is just no space in the kitchen. Next time, I would put way more flour onto the table.

6. The dough was extremely soft and, at times, sticky. Everything must be generously coated with flour!! As I was rolling, I could hear the bubbles popping, and the dough reminded me of marshmallows, mochi, and pillows. Certainly, this is NOT what I saw the last two times I made croissant dough!

7. For the egg wash, I used an egg yolk and 2 tbsp of water. There was probably enough wash leftover for 2 croissants. I painted on the egg wash right before putting the trays in the preheated oven (no skimping for this...). The oven is too small to fit 3 trays on one rack, so the pain au chocolats got the bottom rack. For this particular oven, everything was done between 17 and 20 minutes, and the tops were golden brown and quite close to being burnt.

8. My final yield was 6 pain au chocolats and 10 croissants. I could've made 12-13 pain au chocolats, or 18-19 croissants.


Pictures of Method:

Dough rose in the fridge!! 70 minutes.

Package of butter.

Rolled out package of butter.

Folding like an letter, then folding like a book.

Folded! Fridge time! (1 h)

Covered with damp paper towel while rising - no plastic.

After hour of rising.

500 g of chocolate!

Rolling number 2! Note the bubbles!

5 h in fridge, in damp paper towel and plastic bag.

After the rise.

I saw this idea of cutting a slit online and it seems to help in rolling a more evenly-tall croissant.

There were four Asiago cheese croissants. Those did not rise as well in the next hour, but still baked well.

Rolling pain au chocolats - I used two sticks each.

Before rise.

After rise (and rearrangement). The cheese ones are the top left; they are smaller...

Egg wash! I used the brush I got for $1 at the Penn Moves sale this June!

Taste? Phenomenal! Crispy on the outside, flaky layers on the inside! Not too salty and not too sweet, and perfectly buttery. I've never had a croissant IN France (even though I've been there twice...sad, I know. It's like how I've been to Japan, but only sampled half of a tamagoyaki nigiri on the plane back...no other sushi!), but I'd imagine it's something as fresh and delicious as this (and correctly-sized). It doesn't look like the croissants I've seen in books or on photogenic food sites, with holes the size of ice cubes, but SP assured me that real croissants have layers you can peel and don't have giant holes. He was able to peel his pain au chocolat into layers during his lunch and apparently it made him very happy. So, thank you, Louis la Vache!

This is a quote from him:
Those pains au chocolats were amazing! They're the best ones I've ever had in the US.
[he's lived in France, and he indeed does constantly consume pain au chocolats]

So now, I feel like I can cook ANYTHING.

In other news, in the past few months, my 9 year-old sister made cornbread from a cornbread mix, using the toaster oven, at 7 in the morning for Mother's Day. She even made a glaze from scratch (by herself!!). I am pretty proud of her, especially as she said that I gave her the idea to make glaze (because we've cooked together so many times before). When I was 9, I knew how to fry super oily eggs and make scrumptious buttered toast. Actually, I may not have known how to fry eggs. She also apparently went on a pancake-making spree (from a pancake mix) when I was at school last semester. She also made a cake for Father's day. I suppose I should document her cooking experience here too, every once in a while.

Cheese croissant

Pain au chocolat, the next day.

I didn't have time to take glossy magazine-type photos because SP and I were too busy eating them and watching Adventureland.