French Boule

Whole Wheat Loaf bread

Have you ever had a memory of waking up in the morning and the first thing you smell was freshly baked bread? Or the aroma of cookies right out of the oven upon coming home from school? Well I didn't. Instead at home we have delectable mouth watering aroma coming from the kitchen that my Mom cooked. The thing is, no one in the family bakes. Cooking blockbuster home recipes, yes we have lots of them plus a whole lot of good cooks in our clan. From my Mom to my Grandma to my Aunts and cousins. But baking, not one. Our baked goods were from the neighborhood bakeries, or from tin cans bought from the grocery, or from distant relatives who can bake.

A challenging weekend part 2

A challenging weekend part 1

This weekend my Husband and I challenged ourselves by baking and cooking 2 recipes at the same time. These are pandesal and a steamed pork bun (siopao) which we have been craving for weeks. We've decided to take these up as both recipes involve the same base ingredients and procedures [mixing-kneading-rising-cutting] in the preparation of the dough.

We were banking on my new KitchenAid (KA) for this experiment and also wanted to test a few items like:
(1) the Mayer representative said that the stand mixer model I have can knead dough at max speed of 4.
(2) bread making efficiency as we'll have the KA to do the heavy lifting (kneading) for us.