Have you ever embarked on a baking challenge? After watching The Great British Baking Show, I have been inspired to enhance my baking skills, learn new tips and tricks, and challenge my usual "go-tos" with more variety, flavors, and styles. First up is a simple olive bread loaf from Paul Hollywood's cookbook to get my confidence up!
My personal challenge: baking my way through "How to Bake". This post is my experience baking and learning new skills from tackling each recipe in Paul Hollywood's, "How to Bake". I will also document any recipe changes that I made - mainly as a result of not having the ingredients on hand (i.e., we never have regular sugar in the house) - and how the recipe fared. I will not be providing the recipes that are in his book.
I decided to embark on this challenge after watching The Great British Baking Show and was instantly inspired to up the ante in the kitchen. Side note, I am sure our household was not the only one who binge-watched The Great British Baking Show over the holidays. It is a great show and we got sucked into watching every evening to see how the contestants were doing after the previous week and the new recipes they were asked to bake.
I was not only inspired to bake, but for a few weeks, we traveled to different bake shops around town and visited grocery store display cases in search of unique baked goods that appeared on the show and judge them, accordingly. It was not until we noticed a few pounds sneak up that we decided to pace ourselves and rely on my attempt at the various baked goods in the recipe book.
When the book first arrived, I decided that I would randomly flip through "How to Bake" and select a recipe to make, but when the first recipe that I randomly selected required oodles of butter and time, I knew that I had to keep looking and be a bit more selective. As I scoured the fridge and noticed untouched tapenade, I found the recipe: "Coriander, Olive and Onion Bread".
As you may guess, I did not quite stick to the recipe. I added tapenade and chopped Kalamata olives to what called for '200g good quality, pitted black olives, roughly chopped' and I did not have nigella or cumin seeds, so I figured pumpkin seeds and ground cumin would do the trick for texture and taste.
I believe this first attempt at baking from "How to Bake" turned out better than expected. While I have never tried the actual loaf made as the recipe calls; my first attempt at this loaf was good. The loaf was crisp on the outside, perfectly doughy and airy on the inside, and full of flavor. I love this olive tapenade and cumin combination. Plus, the nuts and seeds adds great texture to each and every bite.
Here are some of the lessons that I learned:
Invest in a Good Measuring Scale. Luckily we had one that was more or less collecting dust with the occasional use weighing tea mixtures. Using a scale felt pretty professional as I poured the flour into a bowl and waited for the scale to adjust. It also made baking a bit more fun because of the precise nature of weighing compared to using a tablespoon to scoop flour into a 1 cup and combining with the other ingredients. Additionally, it makes the recipes easy to follow. I read several reviews before purchasing this book of upset buyers who did not like the fact the recipes were not translated from grams into cups and I worried it would feel like a foreign language class, but honestly, with a scale it is just baking.
Celsius to Fahrenheit. This is a tricky one; unless there is an oven that can switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit like the weather app. Honestly, most recipes are only going to be about 1-3 degrees different (based on the ones I have baked thus far), so is that really going to make a huge difference? For this loaf, I just decreased the cooking time by 10 minutes to check the bread baking and then, planned to add two rounds of 5 minutes, if I needed.
Rising Time. This is the first loaf of bread I had made at the time that needed longer than 90 minutes to rise for an instant yeast. Because this first loaf demanded a little more kneading and attention, the result tasted that much better compared to my quick artisan loaf that I can now, make with my eyes closed.
Flavors. Trust your gut...literally! Make flavor changes that you think will be tasty; after all, you are the one eating it. For this particular recipe, I didn't have some of the toppings for the loaf, so I decided to go for both flavor and, what I presumed, was for texture based on a quick Google search. For me, half of the fun of cooking and baking is changing the flavors slightly or even drastically. I enjoy comparing the first trial to many trials after and constantly asking, "Which one do you like better and why?" So, enjoy yourself in the kitchen and try to not put too much pressure on yourself when following a recipe. And this brings me to my last point;
Have Fun. When I first attempted this challenge, I wanted the bread to turn out perfectly and to be a winner in the 'Technical Challenge,' as if I was presenting the loaf to the judges. But, at the end of the day, my judges were myself and my family and we all enjoyed it immensely with just a little butter or roasted tomatoes. So, even if you are new to baking, remember to enjoy yourself and not put too much heat on yourself in the kitchen.
On that note, I hope that you find a recipe book you enjoy or this one that I am currently baking my way through. Either way, enjoy baking and nourishing yourself and your family.
All my light and all my love. Namaste.
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