Everyday Pain!

While we are on a celebration of the simple, surely the attempt at an everyday bread, Pain de Mie, was in order.

What Bertinet had termed the closest you get to sliced white bread in France turned out to be a breakfast pleasure and a smooth sailing party to make.

Best served slightly warmed and spooned over with gooey, full-fat hazelnut chocolate spread ... this makes weekday mornings worth getting up for.

Back to baguettes

After an ambitious stab at ferment, sourdough and the like, a little reflection was in order ... especially when it looked like there was a basic somewhere that was yearning to be perfected.

So it was a head-back to basic, white baguettes.

This time round, the mini loaves were more precisely formed, the baguette rolls (if you can call them that, since Bertinet has actually reported that the technical definition of a baguette in France calls for exactly seven top slits and probably proportion correct to the last millimetre) were generous in sizing but prettily perfect for a crusty morning bread with robust black coffee.

The first of the second book

D Goddess' bread-making endeavours had made considerable progress after many sessions of kneading, folding and general aiding in the collapse of a flimsy Ikea table; and so was attempted the eventual venture into Bertinet's second book, CRUST, which teaches the incorporation of a slow process of six-hour to overnight ferment.

The first attempt is this approximately nine-hour-in-the-making Somerset Cider Bread, which was fat at first (left above), and only bigger afterwards.

A little too-early slashing meant the partial collapse of the bread, so two loaves were nicely risen and chewy, the other two were perfect for swan-hurling at the Botanic Gardens (which we never did).

That sino-italian link

Seems like the Sino-Italian exchange continues to this day long after our beloved ta mee became linguini and mee pok morphed into fettuccini.

In honour of gastronomical collaborations, our initial idea of cheese-and-wine CNY, which evolved into a teochew muay supper concept (both of which did not materialise), became a local fare punctuated with European flavours affair.

OK, OK ... it was ciabatta and curry.

The result was chewy and light ciabattas enlisted into the service of spicy chicken curry as a gravy scooper and spice-negator. It was the perfect pre and post blackjack dish.

the italian job

An almost picture-perfect match of Bertinet's own picture in his book, this Rock Salt and Rosemary Foccacia was a success in the stomach stakes too.

Not as olive oil-laden as many I've tasted, the symmetry of this bread's shape is as pleasing as the salty-savoury balance of taste that lingers long after slices have gone.

getting fat

Memory fails me, but this could be the first '08 bread.

Sweet, soft and just on the pudgy-cuddly side, this is the springy Pain Viennoise, perfect for hand-tearing and sharing on a Saturday afternoon with fine-leafed tea.

Pale and skinny at the resting stage (below), it emerges bravely browned and bulgy quickly.

Just as quickly, this is easily wiped off the tray. Only fears of our own expanding girth stopped the perfect partnering of pain viennoise with gooey, sticky nutella for a proletarian version
of pain chocolat.

spice really is nice

One of the most heady scents, in equal measures of aversion and attraction, belongs to cheese. What more when it is pungent gruyere being baked to brown perfection.

The second attempt by the D goddess at the much-appreciated Gruyere and Cumin Bread was an olfactory attack.

But out of the oven, it was a proud moment, like a parent seeing a suspiciously errant child become a worthy character.

Punchy in flavour, pricelessly chewy in texture, photogenic in the morning light ... those uncertain, erratic experiments with dough had reached a next level.

Consistency is all.