Honey Wholemeal Milk Loaf

I am continuing to experiment with wholemeal bread in hope to make it as healthy as possible.

This is a variation to my 90% wholemeal bread. This time round, I replaced sugar with honey. Honey, I presumed, should be healthier than sugar. I also reduced the amount of salt.

This bread is baked in my Song-Cho Breadmaker.

Ingredients:

270g organic wholemeal flour

30g cake flour

2 + 1/2 tbsp milk powder

2 + 1/2 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

1 large egg

95g milk

75g plain yogurt

How to do:

1. Pour the wet ingredients into the bread barrel 1st, followed by the flour(s) & lastly the yeast.

2. Select menu '5. Sweet' on the breadmaker & press start.

I didn't let the bread proof on the full cycle on my BM as I was checking the state of the bread and when I felt it was ready for baking, I stopped the sweet mode and started the bake cycle.

I am very pleased with this recipe as it yielded what I feel is a perfect loaf of bread - no dented top!

:: Perfect Loaf of Honey Wholemeal Bread ::

:: Slice it up and it is perfect for breakfast ::

:: The wholemeal bread is soft and stays soft till the next day ::

Not only is this bread healthy, it is very yummy too! It is soft with a tinge of honey fragrance.

Very Soft Hokkaido Wholemeal Milk Loaf - using 90% Wholemeal Flour

I am very excited as I am writing this post... My 4th attempt at the Hokkaido Wholemeal Milk Loaf seems to be on its way to success.. It is currently rising high and baking in my Song-Cho Breadmaker.

I thought I have absolutely no luck with this recipe, which Miss B from Everybody Eats Well in Flanders described as the wholemeal bread that can do yoga, as 3 unsuccessful attempts were really disheartening. Let me bring you through my heart-aching journey...

1st attempt
When I first saw this recipe, I was really keen on trying out as I was looking for a wholemeal bread uses almost 100% wholemeal flour. This is all because my parents had switched to eating wholemeal bread to watch their sugar level. But I see the wholemeal bread selling in the market, I am really quite skeptical about the percentage of wholemeal flour that they used in the bread. Whenever I do any recipe for the first time, I always test out recipe by doing half portion so that if it fails, I don't waste too much of the ingredients.  Anyway, it didn't end up well... The bread did not raise at all and was as hard as rock...

2nd attempt
A few days later... I decided to attempt the recipe again.. I thought my first failure was due to my halving of ingredients and this recipe to meant to follow 100%. And so I followed everything in the recipe, BUT history repeated itself... same results...

3rd attempt
A few weeks later... I am still dreaming about this recipe.. so I decided to give it another go... This time I tried the 'Wholemeal' mode on my breadmaker instead of the 'Sweet Bread' mode using 100% recipe. And nope.. the issue is not about the mode used either... I gave up...

A few months passed... during a conversation with a baker friend who used to live in UK, she told me that the wholemeal flour in Singapore is very different from those in UK. Those in UK are very fine.. whereas the ones sold in Singapore are very coarse. We are of course referring the most common wholemeal flour available in supermarket starting with P.

Hm... perhaps it's the wholemeal flour... but I can't seem to get any other brand of wholemeal flour... Finally, just a few days ago, I spotted organic wholemeal flour hiding among the organic items of my neighbourhood supermarket. The flour seems to be as fine as our normal bread flour. Excitedly, I bought it for my 4th attempt!

:: Organic Wholemeal Flour ::

4th attempt
After adding all the ingredients into the breadmaker and starting it, I can see that this time is different. The ingredients quickly formed into a soft, sticky but together dough. During my previous attempt, even after 10 minutes of kneading, it was still a very fluid, shapeless mess.

Recipe adapted from  Everybody Eats Well in Flanders 

This bread is baked in my Song-Cho Breadmaker.

Ingredients:

270g organic wholemeal flour

30g cake flour

2 + 1/2 tbsp milk powder
40g sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1 + 2/3 tsp instant yeast

1 large egg (mine was 65g)
110g milk (I used low fat milk)

75g plain yoghurt (original recipe calls for heavy whipping cream)

How to do:

1. Pour the wet ingredients into the bread barrel 1st, followed by the flour(s) & lastly the yeast.

2. Select menu '5. Sweet' on the breadmaker & press start.

And about 2 hours 50 min later...

:: The loaf is ready!! ::

I personally disliked thick bread crust so I wrap my bread barrel with aluminum foil (shiny faced inwards). Thank you this wonderful piece of tip, Miss B!

:: The loaf is ready for cutting :

I could never imagine that a 90% wholemeal flour bread could be this soft.. I am glad I preserve and finally succeed in making this bread. Eating wholemeal bread would never be the same again!

:: Yoga Wholemeal Bread ::

**Update on 19 Jun 2015
Have been using this recipe for quite a few times and my family absolutely loves it!
But then one day, the recipe just stopped working for me. The bread collapsed in the breadmaker when it started to bake.

I suspected that the bread has been overproofed. Not sure why because I use the same ingredients and same baking mode. After a few failures, I decided to manually stop my BM proofing time when I feel that the bread is proof enough and start baking mode. But this will defeat the purpose of using a BM as the whole idea of having a BM is just put everything in and a nice bread comes out at the end of the cycle.

Somehow, the dough feels much warmer in the BM recently. Could it be that the temperature of my BM has somewhat increased?

In any case, I experimented for a few times and now I only use 1 tsp of yeast and this allows me to use the 'sweet' mode on my Song-Cho BM without overproofing the bread.

Cute Piggy Hotdog Buns～Oink Oink!

One of my friends asked me if I could shape my bread into piggy shape. I thought it shouldn't be too difficult and did it with the Hokkaido Milk Bread dough. You can find the recipe here.

Just before the final proofing, the dough is to be shaped into the piggies.
While shaping, remember to cover the dough with a damp cloth to prevent the dough from drying up.

How to do:

1. Cut the hotdogs into size approx 4cm length.
2. Cook the hotdogs in the oven at 170degree for approx 5-10min
3. Remove the hotdogs from the oven and let them cool for easy handling.
4. When the bread dough is ready for shaping, cut approx. 40g of dough which form the main body of the pigs.
5. Shape the dough into round and flatten it into a circle with a roll pin.
6. Place the hotdog in the center and wrap the dough around the hotdog and pinch the edge of the dough together. This should form a longish bun shape.
7. Place the shaped bun onto the baking tray with the pinched side downwards.
8. Cut 5 small portions of dough and shape them round, approx pea size to form the legs and nose.
9. Use 2 tooth picks to fix the nose onto one end of the main bun body.
10. Press the rest of the 4 small round dough to body to form the legs.
11. Use 2 more tooth picks and poke into main body, above the nose to form the eyes.
12  Take another small portion of dough and roll into a thin thread and fix onto the body as tail.
13. Finally, use a small sharp scissors to cut an inverted v above the eggs for the ears.
14. Let the pigs go through a final proof for approx. 20min and egg wash the body of the pigs before baking.
15. Bake in a preheated oven at 170degree for approx. 20min or till the pigs are brown.

:: The egg washed piggies before baking ::

:: Don't forget the little details like the tail ::

:: Piggy Hotdog Buns ::

When the buns are done, remove the tooth picks from the buns by twisting while pulling gently out

:: Hello from my piglet bun ::

Wholemeal Milk Bread - A Healthier Alternative

Due to health reasons, my parents only eat wholemeal bread. However, we have no control over the percentage of wholemeal flour vs bread flour for the wholemeal bread we bought off the shelves.

This is also one of the reasons why my mom and I have decided to get a breadmaker. I have tried the recipe that comes from the instruction menu of Song-Cho breadmaker. It turned out ok.. but a bit on the dense and coarse side. Can't really say we enjoy it very much.

I have tried and tested a few other recipes but failed quite miserably. One thing I noticed for wholemeal bread is that the dough is normally more sticky and watery than normal bread dough. This is especially true if the wholemeal flour makes up of a high percentage of the recipe. I used the breadmaker to knead for a very long time but the dough just doesn't seem to come together. And because the dough is too watery, there's not enough structure to support the bread when it proof and often collapse before it goes into the oven.

I was on the verge of giving up making wholemeal bread till I chanced upon this recipe.

This recipe produces nice fluffy wholemeal bread. This recipe used ratio of more 50% wholemeal bread vs bread flour. While I would love to have higher content of wholemeal flour, I am happy with this recipe for now since those recipes with higher wholemeal flour content fail.

Recipe adapted from Little Corner of Mine

*I have halved the recipe to test if this recipe works for me.

This bread dough is partially knead my Song-Cho Breadmaker and baked in my Morris tabletop oven.

Ingredients:

200ml milk

14g butter (melted or soften)
2 + 1/4 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

114g wholemeal flour

85g bread flour

1 tsp yeast

How to do:

1. Pour the ingredients into the bread barrel according to the sequence from top to bottom up except for yeast. 

2. Place sugar and salt in the different corner of barrel.
3. Make a well in the bread flour and put the yeast into the well.
4. Select menu '5. Sweet' on the breadmaker & press start.
5. I stopped the machine after it completed it Rise2 with the intention to mould them into buns. However, when I took out the dough, it was still quite fluid and sticky, can't hold it shape well. So I proceed to kneading it with my hands on a lightly floured surface. It took me about 45min of kneading before I am satisfied with the texture of the dough. It is still soft but able to hold its shape better. It also become less sticky.

The ingredients above fill about four muffin cups and one 4.5 inch cake pan (3 buns).

6. Allow the dough to go through another round of proofing till it doubled in size. I followed the original recipe method of putting 2 bowl of hot water at the lower rack of the oven and place my muffin cups and cake pan on the middle rack for proof. It took about 20 minutes to almost double in size.

7. Remove the muffin cups and cake pan from the oven and start to pre-heat the oven at 170 degree celsius. Meanwhile the dough will continue to proof at room temperature till it double in size.

8. Bake in my oven for about 15 min.

:: Wholemeal Bread ~ 3 Buns in 4.5" Cake Pan ::

:: Soft & fluffy like white bread ::

I will attempt this recipe again and hopefully find a suitable mode on breadmaker to knead the dough fully so that I won't have to work my muscle. 

Soft & Fluffy - Hokkaido Milk Bread

With the 1st considerable successful attempt at baking a basic bread loaf using Song-Cho bread machine, I started to search for recipes that produce soft and fluffy bread.

Once again, I turned to my one of my favourite recipes blog: Everybody Eats Well in Flanders
and found this awesome bread recipe!

Recipe adapted from  Everybody Eats Well in Flanders

*I have halved the recipe to test if this recipe works for me.

This bread is baked using my Song-Cho Breadmaker.


Ingredients:

135g bread flour
15g cake flour
2 + 1/2 tbsp skim milk powder
20g fine sugar
1/3 tsp salt
1/2 egg
62.5g fresh milk
37.5g cream

1/2 tsp yeast


How to do:

1. Pour the ingredients into the bread barrel according to the sequence above from bottom up except for yeast.
2. Make a well in the bread flour and put the yeast into the well.
3. Select menu '5. Sweet' on the breadmaker, set color & loaf option & press start.

The original recipe will make 700g loaf but since I halved the recipe, theoretically, it should bake a 350g loaf. Anyway, I select 1.0LB under loaf option.

I guessed I could have just leave the breadmaker to do its job and have a nice little loaf. But my itchy hands just have to play around with the recipe.

So I waited till the breadmaker completed its Rise2 and pause the machine, took out the dough, portioned into 4 equal portion.
I stuffed a piece of hazelnut chocolate into the middle each portion and shaped it round, put it back into the breadmaker, unpause the machine and let it continue with Rise3 & Bake.

I have to say.. This recipe is really good! Baking in breadmaker.. not so good... hahaha..
As expected, baking in the breadmaker developed a rather thick crust.
But the recipe itself produces very soft and fluffy bread. The best part is that it stayed fluffy even till the next day. 

:: Hokkaido Milk Bread Using Song-Cho Breadmaker ::

:: Soft & Fluffy Milk Bread with Hazelnut Chocolate :: 

Also, due to the reduce ingredients, kneading using the breadmaker is not so ideal as the mixing blade tends to drop out so I need to pause the machine and reattached a few times. So I guessed there's a minimum weight criteria for the ingredients in order to use the breadmaker efficiently.

To conclude, I am very happy with the success of this recipe but I will probably bake using the oven the next time.

Brief Review of Song-Cho Breadmaker & 1st Loaf of Bread

Breadmaker has been around for quite some time and seems like it is getting popular during the recent years. With its popularity, seems like more brands are coming out with their own breadmaker at affordable price.

My mom got very interested in breadmaker after watching some TV home shopping program. And I understand from my friends that breadmaker is really easy to use.. just dump everything in a particuar order and you get a nice hot bread at the end of about 3 hours.

And so after looking around, we decided to get a Song-Cho breadmaker. Price is one of the attractive factors (below $200).  It comes with a 18 presets functions and the promotor said apart from making various types of bread, it can be used for making Mee Hoon Kueh dough and jam.

The machine is made in China and comes with an English and Chinese instruction menu. Maybe because it is made in China, the menu was probably first written in Chinese then translate to English. The English is not very well translated. Some info are been missed out while some of the translated English are hard to understand. However, if you can understand Chinese, the Chinese menu is quite comprehensive.

:: Sleek Looking Song-Cho Breadmaker ::

:: 18 preset menus of Song-Cho Breadmaker ::

Base on the menu, the ingredients should always be placed into the bread barrel according to this sequence:

Water => Oil => Sugar => Salt => Milk Powder => Flour => Yeast

I have done some research on breadmaker and bread making and my understanding is this:

1) Always put in the liquid ingredients 1st
2) Followed by sugar at one corner, salt at the opposite far corner
3) Flour should be put in as 2nd last ingredient
4) Yeast will be the last ingredient to be in, preferably dig a well in the center of the flour and put it in.

It is essential that the yeast does not touch the liquid ingredients, salt & sugar if you are using the delayed baking function.

Using the recipe in the instruction menu.

Ingredients:

160ml water
12ml cooking oil
3g salt
12g sugar
1 tbsp milk powder
260g bread flour
1 tsp yeast (I used instant yeast)

How to do:

1. Put all the ingredients into the bread barrel according to sequence listed above
2. Turn on the Song-Cho Breadmaker
3. Press the Menu button twice so that '2. Basic' preset function is selected.
4. Press the Color button to select light, medium or dark color of the bread crust. I selected medium
5. Press the Loaf button to select the weight of the loaf. For the above ingredients, it will be a 1.0LB loaf.
5. Press the Start button and leave the machine to do its job.

Tadah!! After 2hr 50 min, the loaf is done!

:: 1st Loaf of Bread using Song-Cho Breadmaker ::

The dark spots on the bread are actually some leftover raisins from baking of my fruit cakes. I throw them in when the breadmaker is at knead2.

So how does the bread from Song-Cho Breadmaker fares against commercial bread? I actually find the crust to be on the thick side esp at the bottom. Maybe I should choose light color crust next time. As for the white bread part, according to my mom (an avid bread eater), it is comparable to commercial bread such like G brand or S brand.

Since this 1st loaf of bread, I have tested other recipes and yield more fluffy bread. Will be sharing in sequence posts.

2015 is coming! Have an awesome new year!