1-Day White Bread

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of white flour.
2/3 cup of warm milk. 
1 tbsp Active Dry Yeast.
pinch of salt.
1 tbsp sugar.


Cooking:
Add the dry ingredients (including most of the yeast) to a mixing bowl and make a well in the center. Warm the milk in a pot and add 1/4 of the tbsp of yeast and allow to dissolve (i've made this bread 4 times now and it works a lot better when you add some to the milk). Mix together thoroughly and add more milk/flour as needed- mixture consistency never seems to be the same as the recipe! If you have butter (not margarine) you can use 1/4 cup of milk and the rest of melted butter- real butter is hard to find in Korea so I work without it.


Lightly flour the bench and knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Put it back in the bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and place somewhere warm for 1 hours (if you can spare 2-3 it's even better). Re-knead the bread lightly and roll out a long rectangle on the bench. Roll it up lengthwise with the seam facing down, tuck the end s of the load underneath with the seam. If you're cooking it in a loaf tin, put it in this and back in the warm spot for 45-60 mins, otherwise the oven tray is fine. The bread should rise a bit more and stops it from being too dense. Cook for 25 mins at 200 degrees C. Let it cool for 5 mins before you cut it so it doesn't crumble! Best eaten warm or toasted.

Fresh out of the oven!

The First Post.

I've grown up in a cooking household and as a result, love to cook. My mum and grandma are both amazing cooks with very different styles. Mum is a bit of a foodie who can cook almost anything, if she feels like it, Nana was a farmers wife and is a roast and soup whiz. As kids, my siblings and I spent our winters in South East Asia, and have been keen eaters of Asian cuisine since. Watching mum cook usually ended in me asking her for the recipe, and being told 'oh I just put a bit of this, and about a handful of that and then...'. Really helpful for someone trying to learn! So i've developed my own mismatched cooking style. Sometimes I work from a base recipe and add things to change the flavour, sometimes it's from memory or taste, and most often it's from what ever is in the cupboard. 

I'll share my successes, failures, flat-as-pancake cakes and a bread recipe that magically improves everytime. I'll also be blogging about restaurants, cafes or street stalls that I come across on my upcoming trip through Bali, Malaysia and Vietnam, during my final month in Korea and from back in Auckland.

It's currently -2 in Korea, balmy compared to the -10's and snow we've been having! Last night I put together a hearty beef and red wine casserole and attempted a loaf of handmade white bread. As a bit of a side note, Korea  is probably a terrible place to start a food blog- my student flats had cupboards and equipment better suited to cooking...and a real oven too. Cooking here is bare-bones basic cooking...Koreans don't tend to use spices or herbs aside from salt and chili and i'm really missing basil, rosemary and coriander! My 'oven' is a little toaster oven- and a gem- but not entirely suitable for baking...I am looking forward to getting home and heading to the supermarket. For now- Winter Beef and Red Wine Casserole and 1-Day White Bread.