Bread Story

I bought this breadmachine when I was 6 months into my last pregnancy. With a round belly, I carried this breadmachine, walking 4 level of staircase down from a shopping complex. It took me another 20 minutes of walking distance to the Bank Negara Komuter Station and yet another challenge awaited. There was an arch-shape overhead bridge with at least 50 or more staircase to go up and down and I repeated the climbing up and down the second time when I disembarked from the train reached home safe and sound with my newly bought breadmachine.

I could do all these crazy stuffs because of my "perseverance" and " fear-not" enthusiasm into healthy dieting. When I found out that I was pregnant, i suddenly turned out to be a health freak and sworn to give the most nutritious food to my baby. When I saw this machine in the product catalogue, I told myself, this is what I want and I need to get it! So without much considerations, i headed for the shop to get it.

I have made numerous loaves using this breadmaker but 9 times out of 10 times, the outcome was a real let-down. The bread is either too moist or too hard. Nonetheless, it's edible. I convinced myself that although the bread is not tasty, but I must eat it cos indeed it was packed with good nutrients which are essential for my to-be-born baby. I have dumped in lots of goodies such as olive oil, walnuts, organic honey, wholemeal flour, and any such stuff you can get from a health food store.

Over the years, with innumerable failures, I have discovered the secret of a good bread lies in the hand of baker and not the breadmachine(i really don't understand why it took me so long to realise that, perhaps it is natural for people to always put the blame on others than admitting their own weakness). I have improvised through numerous trials and errors again and the quality of my loaves gradually improved from one attempt to another. At times I seemed to be hitting on the jackpot- the quality turned out to be closed to bread story standard(ahem!) Though my loaf would failed once in awhile especially when I did it in a hurry without letting the dough enough time to "prove" itself, my loaves taste a lot more better than the earlier attempts. The secret of the missing main ingredients which I discovered from my breadmaking venture is - "PATIENCE". Yes! PATIENCE IS THE MAIN INGREDIENT OF A GOOD LOAF!

At times, I discovered that this main ingredient is hard to find, I decided to do a trade-off. When I lose my patient to bake a loaf in a slow and steady manner, I resort to quick win, i.e. get a pack of bread mix from the baking ingredients shop. Finally, I am convinced that patience can be bought..hehehe!:-p

Look at the picture below, this is the fully proofed bread dough after 1 1/2 hour





I brush the loaf tin with olive oil - so to convince me that this homemade loaf is worth far more better than the bakeries'.

End result after cutting - It's soft and fluffy


Wanna bite?? 2 slices have gone into my stomach before this picture is taken...

If you are interested to bake your own loaf? Just get the bread mix from BRP Baking Ingredient shop. Worth trying...