Dave’s Blog

So, Today I started making bread using Ruhlman’s ratio recipe, and to conquer my this far failure to make bread.

Step 1 was to measure the flour

Weighing the flour

Then mix it and knead it

Sticky dough

Sweet balls of dough!

And then I left it to rise for two hours. What do you do for two hours?

Arise!!! I poked it to see if it had risen enough... it didn't spring back, so it had risen enough.

Then I punched it down and kneaded again and put it in the oven, praying that the bread would not be dense and doughy! I wanted to add some steam to the start of the process, so I had a ceramic casserole dish that had preheated with the oven and wanted to add boiling water to so that it created steam. When I added the water I heard a crack and I knew instantly the ceramic dish had broken. D’oh!

Bake my pretty!!

40 Minutes later I took the loaf out of the oven!! It felt lighter than the previous boule’s, so that was a good start.

Looks good.

It looked good, It smelled good, it had a hollow sound when I tapped the bottom – it even crackled when it came out of the oven like bread should!! Cutting into the loaf and seeing the bread was like a dream come true! finally my bread was breadlike!

Nice!

What do you do with awesome bread – Eat it of course!!

Nothing better than to cover fresh bread with German pork products!

Sweet, sweet Nutella! Did it pass the Nutella test?

So did the bread pass the Nutella test? The bread was fantastic – awesome crust and good inside. Rach said it needed a bit more salt and I agreed, and I think the oven here runs a bit too hot, so next time I’ll turn it down a bit and see if I can get the dough a bit more fluffy!

Coming up – I’ll make the bread again and try some other variations.

I’ve tried to make bread a couple of times now, but each time I’ve ended up with heavy bread because the dough hasn’t risen enough

Bread

The first time I tried Jamie Olivers recipe the loaf was large and heavy. It looked good, but when I cut into it the inside dough was thick and doughy. My second attempt was last week. I tried to make the 5 minute bread a specified here
The bread rolls looked great, smelled great and I thought I had achieved sweet succulent success. I picked up the first roll and it felt a bit heavy to me. Still not disheartened, I cut it open to find the same thick, doughy inside. My heart broke a little.

I left the rest of the dough from the 5 minute recipe for another day in the fridge and I noticed that it had risen some more, so I thought to myself – Perfect I’ll try the rolls again.

This time the rolls looked perfect, smelled perfect and were a little lighter, and when I cut them open hey were a bit better than before, but not good enough they were still too thick and doughy to be edible.

Luckily for me, Rach got me Ruhlman’s Ratio book for Christmas. So, tomorrow I’ll be trying to make bread the Ruhlman way. Success will be mine I think!!

Well, with 99 days to go we’re slowly getting into a higher gear to be on the move. Currently we are slowly clearing out the apartment and throwing out things by the boxload. It’s good to be planning this far in advance because instead of a mad rush to clean out we’re going to do it nice and slowly. I still need to go through my clothes and the storage cupboard which I think are currently holding a number of boxes destined for the bin.

Rach has slowly been acquiring some travel gear like shoes (Crocs, but the flats not the gay ones) and various other bits and pieces. I’m going to start looking soon. I’m hoping that now that summer is over the various adventure and travel shops in the city here will be doing specials. I’d especially like to get some of those fandangled travel undies (like these) which will help with washing and drying.

We’ve also been hastily calling my family over in Germany trying to tee up some initial times for when we’d like to visit. It seems too early to be organising that, but my family are keen to get us locked in so they can do some planning! At the moment I’m thinking in 2 week blocks which I think is enough to see my family and also have some time to explore the area around on our own so that we don’t get on my family’s nerves.

I think in the next month we’ll start wanting to get into the detail of it all a bit more!

A couple of weeks ago we went to the European travel expo and bought our one way tickets to Frankfurt!

The expo was pretty touristy. All of the major airlines were there as well. The large tour groups like Contiki. I couldn’t think of anything worse than doing a contiki or busabout tour when doing a long term trip to anywhere. There’s so much more to see than the inside of a bus and the sanctioned stops!

So we steered clear of all of the tours a headed to one of the hundred or so travel agents all eagerly awaiting to make bookings and take our money. We found a girl from flight center, told her what we wanted and we ended up with $1200 one way tickets to Frankfurt! A great price for our budget and with a nights layover in Seoul it should break the trip up nicely!

So now we have a date to look forward to – the 10th June 2009! The feeling is so exciting and we both agreed that we couldn’t wait to be there! It’s put an impatience in both of us to get there asap!

So we have a lot to prepare for! Last night we started thinking about how much we would need to chuck out! I’ll talk about that in a later post but for now we are so excited!

Cardenal Mendoza Colour

The legend of Cardenal Mendoza stems from by brother Lars. When my brother Alex was visiting Lars they had some Cardenal Mendoza. Since then Alex has been raving about the Mendoza. So we started a Mendoza fund – that is we would both save up our small change or shrapnel and hopefully after a couple of months end up with enough cash to afford a bottle of Mendoza in Australia ( from bootleg.com.au )

So after about 3 months I had saved up about $130 and Alex had saved up about $0…  So I am having the first taste on my own and later on Alex and I will enjoy the fruits of my labour together.

The Mendoza comes as a great bottle with traditional label showing the crest and name in an old school font. I like it! The yellow is kind of new school but the overall design is old school so it makes for a good impression.

Cardenal Mendoza Bottle

The Mendoza has a raisin aroma along with the typical brandy scent. The dark brown colour is alluring and enticing.

The first taste of the Mendoza is of a distinct dried fruit flavour almost like an apricot and raisin combo. The mid pallet is of the typical brandy heat and the finish is satisfying solid woodiness reminding me of an old barrel just being discovered.

The Mendoza is highly satisfying. Definitely a hint of Spanishness with a sunny fired fruit flavour representing lots of warmth and a relaxed atmosphere. I would drink this with much joy and also especially if I am feeling relaxed and in the mood for something a bit sweeter. Give me a buzz if you want some!