Kick off!

Great! I am wiring my very first article in this blog. But this is definitely not the first time for me to make bread at home.

I used to knead the dough by myself and in the end I just had sore arms. Ever since  I have the bread machine, making bread has become so easy. I still need to keep an eye on the bread and add butter when it's the time, but lots of work are saved because of the machine. Now I make the bread at home 2-3 times a week and never ever purchased bread  from the grocery store again. Why?! They just taste so so different.

I am not really fond of the texture of bread in the US. In Asian, people prefer soft bread. And there are a lot more variety of options of bread at the bakery. Here? None! And that's why I need to make everything by myself.

There are some techniques to make softer bread, and yes, there are also some efforts that you need to make. I personally don't like the bread that's baked inside the bread machine and I like my bread with different shapes, so I only use the bread machine to combine the ingredients and knead dough. I take out the dough and let it raise and bake outside of the bread machine.

Let's start with the technique to have softer bread. The first technique is called water roux method. You combine a small amount of flour (e.g. 50g out of 300g) and milk/water (e.g. 50ml out of 150 ml) and add this mixture later with other ingredients. It will take about 10 minutes at most to have the mixture,but by using this method, the bread will be softer.

The other technique to make the bread softer is sponge dough method. You first combine about 70% of the flour (e.g. 250g out of 370g), milk/water (e.g. 150ml out of 180 ml), and ALL the yeast that is called for in the recipe. Knead the dough as you make the bread and let it raise for 1.5 to 2 hours or until the size of the dough is twice bigger. And then, put this dough inside the bread machine along with other ingredients.

As for the order of the ingredients that need to be put in the bread machine, I always put wet ingredients first (e.g. water, milk, egg, honey, and the dough from either water roux or sponge dough method etc.). And the second layer is flour. And then sugar, salt, any seasonings or powders. I add yeast the last. Everything works really great for me so far.

Okay. let's start with the loaf bread with black sesame powders, raisins, and walnuts then. Happy baking!