must sleep

the past three days have been a blur, mostly because i was trying to cram too many things into an incredibly shortened weekend. first, there was guard duty taking out my entire saturday, then there was the clique dinner and beejuan's birthday cake to be done. at the same time i was trying to get started on peter reinhart's transitional challah, which i did with tiffany last month, because i had a big pack of whole-wheat flour to use up soon.

so here i am now, just back from the clique dinner at jia en's house, after saturday guard duty (with very broken sleep), and after last friday's pre-bakes. and this is the smug housewife moment: the clever use of time and the refrigerator to start the baking in advance.

last friday i baked the cake for beejuan's birthday and wrapped it up in the refrigerator. the idea was to just take it out today morning and get on with the icing as soon as the chill went off, as opposed to baking the cake today and waiting endlessly for the cool-down. also, last friday i started the soaker and biga for the challah.

i think my baking mojo is back.

the cake for beejuan's birthday was nigella's honey chocolate cake. i was actually very excited to make the marzipan bees for the decoration, though i must say that i hate marzipan itself.
making the cake batter. sometimes i find nigella's cake recipe a bit interesting. her cake recipes are the first (and only) that i've seen which call for boiling water as the liquid ingredient to make the batter.
this was where i stopped on friday. after the cake was cooled, i wrapped it up and stored in the refrigerator until today morning. luckily the cake had some form and structure to it; it didn't break or crumble when being handled during the wrapping and unwrapping.
glazing the cake with the shiny honey chocolate glaze. it was a shame that the side of the cake was not smooth, resulting in a ragged glazing surface instead of a smooth one.
the rejected marzipan bees: either mutilated with glaze, or drowned in the centre of the glaze pool.
after carefully sliding away the parchment paper strips lining the base, the cake is complete. the three surviving marzipan bees perch at the edge of the pool of honey chocolate glaze.

and the transitional challah that i started last friday. it's 'transitional' because it mixes white flour with wholemeal flour. (the recipe comes from a book that advocates the complete conversion to whole-grain baking.
the one on top is the soaker, which is just a mixture of wholemeal flour, water and salt. the one below is the biga, which has the egg, yolks, white flour, water and some yeast. i haven't read reinhart's book yet, but i think the point of making the soaker is to fully hydrate the wholemeal flour, so as to make the resulting dough lighter or something.

and this was where i stopped last friday. the biga and soaker were given a long rest in the refrigerator until today morning. mixing the biga was quite nice; i liked the yolky smell left on my hands after mixing it.
after the long rest, the soaker didn't change much: it just looked darker, and was less sticky. the biga, however, had already doubled in volume, and after scraping some of it out onto the table, you can see the webby interior! it made me feel a bit sick, actually, because it looked like some freaky lair if you zoomed into the deeper holes.
this is the final dough after the biga and soaker have been incorporated into the other ingredients.
braiding the strands together. i like doing this a lot: the repetitive chanting of the sequence of the braiding is somewhat calming.
the one on top is the 4-braid loaf. the one below is the 6-braid loaf. the 4-braid grew very huge during proofing, making the strands look excessively fat. the 6-braid was made with poorly formed strands, resulting in a very unclear braiding pattern at both ends =( also, because of the limitation of my oven, i couldn't bake the 6-braid until the 4-braid was done, by which time i think it over-proofed, causing some unsightly air bubbles on the surface.
the 4- and 6-braid challah loaves baked! but i left the 6-braid in the oven a little too long/overexposed to the heating element; it almost got burnt.
the same fluffy result as last time. this is one wholemeal bread i can like.

sleep-deprived now, and i'm going to hit the bed, which looks all too unfamiliar. like it isn't mine.