sweeten

turns out, there are some good pierre hermé recipes floating around the internet. so i made these viennois chocolate sables.

piping cookie dough from a pastry bag can be fun, but i think it's only fun now because i have learnt enough not to make a mess. in the end, everything comes from practice and familiarity. the cookies were super crumbly, as sables should be, and shattered too easily.

nothing moved

tried an online recipe for cinnamon leaves.

the dough used all-purpose flour instead of bread flour, so it was slightly sticky, but the mixer settled it well. the dough is probably a brioche, and i like how the dough stretches thin under its own weight in the windowpane test.

after rolling out the dough into a big rectangle, brush it with browned butter, or beurre noir. you just melt butter, and continue heating it gently until it starts to turn a darker colour. then, there will be bits that start to turn brown, but you can just decanter the browned butter and discard the brown bits.

then scatter with a thick, thick layer of cinnamon sugar. slice lengthwise into 6 long strips, stack them up, and chop into 6 mini stacks. a lot of sugar would have spilled out, but just throw it all into the loaf pan, then squeeze the mini stacks in and let them get duly puffy.

the caramel the forms from the extra sugar at the bottom of the pan is so wonderfully thick. after the loaf cools it becomes a glazy layer like glazed donuts. the recipe is called 'cinnamon leaves' because the laof is supposed to be peeled piece by piece and eaten, but i just cut through it into slices.

finally tried a ciabatta.

this recipe began with a biga that was left to ferment overnight.

the dough was really wet. but because it is not a foccacia, i couldn't use too much oil to handle it.

in place of oil is a lot of flour. the flour prevents sticking, but the dough still readily absorbed the flour that it was placed on.

ciabatta is a flat bread made from lean dough, so a lot of the final product depends on whether you can trap the air in the slack and soft dough. this means very minimal handling after the loaf has been preshaped and shaped. in the end, i think my loaf was not airy enough; the crumb was not very open. for thin 1cm slices, the bread was open-crumbed enough for dipping in olive oil and eating straight. but when i tried a bigger slab for a sandwich, it got tiring to chew.

and finally, a simply tossed salad.

so tired now.

compartmentalise

nigella's garlic-parsley hearthbread is like a foccacia, with indian flavours. it's like a naan, but thicker and breadier.

pulsing parsley with oven roasted garlic cloves and olive oil to get a runny, pungent paste.

here's a trick i discovered. foccacia-type dough is wet, and begins like a ciabatta dough. but since you know it is intended that the final bread is drenched and anointed in oil, just go ahead and use oil to handle the dough throughout the baking process - oil the bench, oil the bowl, oil your hands. it makes wet dough a lot more manageable. and all the oil just goes to enrich the dough eventually. i like to slice up a bread like this into squares, wrap them up in parchment, and give them away.

then one day i found peanut butter and nutella sitting around in the cupboard: opened, neglected, and never going to be finished.

so i scooped them out, dumped them with chocolate buttons, a dash of cayenne pepper, and melted everything together to make a truffle fillling. thankfully, i didn't overdo the cayenne pepper - the truffle leaves a rather spicy aftertaste.

i tempered the last batch of chocolate sitting in the refrigerator. the weather has been hot, so the chocolate didn't seem to set, though i was sure it was at temper.

lining the chocolate molds with a base coat, then filling with the truffle, and sealing with chocolate again. and popping the chocolates out of the molds. i like my square mold; it gives more beautiful chocolates.

i also made bertinet's pain de mie by hand.

at 70% hydration, the french slapping way works just fine to bring the dough together. the following is a series of photos of the dough, each after 100 slaps on the bench.

so, 1000 slaps in total. and the gluten window.

the dough became super smooth after a simple shaping!

dividing and shaping the dough to fit into two pullman loaf tins. i was glad that finally there was enough dough to rise and fill up the tins just right.

true to the name, pain de mie is all about the crumb. there is not much crust to it, but the crumb was closely knit (but not in the brick-like way) and delicious.

immediately, i set about preparing to make croque monsieur with the pain de mie.

croque monsieur uses sauce bechamel. this begins as a white roux, into which milk is beaten in, cooked till thickened, and then seasoned with pepper, nutmeg and salt.

assembling the sandwiches. two slices of bread, spread with bechamel, sandwiching a slice of ham. then, more bechamel on top, followed by a thick sprinkling of cheese.

into the oven, until the cheese is all melted and bubbling. slicing through the sandwiches was so exciting!

i tossed together a simple salad: butterhead with garlicky diced tomatoes. assembled onto a plate, and it felt like a perfect dinner at a diner.