11/11/07

Flour test- Allinson Whole Wheat Flour

I was at the Gim Hin Lee shop at Haig Road and picked up a bag of Allinson whole wheat flour. There was a recipe for wholewheat bread and decided to test out the flour using the recipe. The recipe called for 540g of the flour but I decided to use the entire contents of the package as I did not want to have too much unused flour lying around.

During the mixing, I altered the recipe as I thought the scaled portion of the yeast was a little too much. In the same way, I cut down the salt and the oil but increased the water to a much higher hydration level. It was probably a mistake and the next time I use this flour, I'd stick more closely to the recipe. However, the results were satisfactory as the oven spring was pretty decent. The bread was light and the crumb tasted sweet and nutty. The bran flakes were quite large in this flour but this did not affect the density of the bread. Overall, it is a very good flour and I'd like to use it again.

I have been very busy lately and today was no different. After spending the entire afternoon at the Robertson Quay area, I was a little tired when baking the bread. I have been baking more sweet bread lately because I did not have the time to prepare the preferments. However, the cinnamon buns that I had given to co-workers were much better received than my regular breads. It's yet another case of locals liking soft sweet bread. When I gave my bread to a neighbour, he absolutely hated it and said that it was too hard. I recalled the owner of Cedele telling an anecdote about a customer who brought back a bread on the second day of her opening and asked her if the bread was made of stone. I can surely empathize with this as I have had enough of these experiences to give up giving bread to people.

It dawned on me one day that the lean artisan bread that I prefer is a just a simple staple food just like plain white rice is to us Asians. Giving a loaf of Ciabatta is like giving someone a bowl of plain white rice. That is certainly not going to be well received.  Giving someone a raisin bread or a flavored focaccia is like giving someone fried rice. That is a little more acceptable. The problem with most locals is that they are either too lazy to do something with the bread, like in making a bruschetta or simply do not like eating bread that requires a little chewing. The delicate flavor of properly fermented dough and good crumb texture with slightly chewing consistency is probably beyond the senses of people used to soft cotton candy textures flavored and colored artificially.

In my wife's baking class, the aunties praised the cakes simply because of the artificial flavorings. Most are blissfully unaware of eating near plastic transfats additives pervasive in our local baked goods.