Making Bread and Cooking in Tizz Kitchen

Never ever throw away your ripe #banana. Use it to bake banana bread/cake or steam banana cake. It doesn't need a mixer, a whisk is enough to mix the ingredients.

Another warm days in Kolkata, I plan just to have simple meal. I try to make just spinach pizza baked on pan. This time I still used the same method of my sourdough pizza dough which is cold fermentation. 

After one week away from home, I miss my sourdough starter. I leave him for a week in the fridge and It grows pretty well. Today I am going to use it to bake peanuts filling bun. Let me make a try with one week sourdough starter. Before using it, I removed some out and feed it with fresh flour and water. It will be too sour for buns if I use one week old sourdough starter. I fed the sourdough starter for two hours in room temperature. I mix it with the rest ingredients. I left it overnight in the fridge for cold fermentation. Notes. For cold fermentation in order to avoid the dough dry out, I covered the bowl with wet towels and placed the bowl in a plastic bag.

Another day in the hot sunny kitchen here in Kolkata. The weather is super warm and it is good weather to bring the sourdough starter on action. Here I am with a limited equipment and want to do my hobby which is baking bread. Turmeric buns are baked on thefrying pan

Paratha is very famous snack/dish in India. I try to learn it and have done several experiments with the dough. Some was too dry, too crispy, too thin, not cooked properly. I have done the traditional way which uses whole wheat flour, water, oil and 30 minutes rest/fermentation time, it was too dry for me. Today I will share the experiment that I have done with my sourdough starter and cold fermentation. It gave fluffy and chewy consistency on the bread. I stuffed it with cooked potatoes and peanuts sauce as condiment. Aloo Paratha

Another day for experiment in my kitchen. I made buns with sourdough starter through cold fermentation. I added chia seeds into it. I baked it on non-stick pan. The appearance of buns after shaping and proofing for 90 minutes

Thinking to make pizza bread on non-stick pan with my sourdough starter. It was a challenge for me as it was my first trial to do this experiment. I did not do any kneading on the dough, I just folded them. I did overnight cold fermentation in the fridge. 

Another weekend to try experiment with my lovely dough. Today I made layered pita bread. It is my first trial. I did not do any bulk fermentation, just short fermentation. It takes me just 1 hour and it is done. This was the fastest bread I made. It turns out good and fluffy. It is not dry at all.

Another day with playing dough in the kitchen. I love to play dough in the kitchen. It relieves my mind and let my creativity playing around with the available ingredients in my kitchen. Because I do not have oven here, I could only do something on my electric stove with pan and pot. I planned to make flat bread with whole wheat flour / Atta in India. The flour is a bit rough than all purpose flour / Maida in India. Here I do another experiment with Indian flour and my sourdough starter that is almost 3 months old.

As a girl with Chinese blood, I cannot resist of having chinese breakfast. I always crave for it whenever I am. One of the favorite chinese breakfast is congee and fried doughstick. Here I am, present my recently experiment with sourdough starter to make fried doughstick.

I try to make pita bread using the sourdough starter and a pan on my electric stove. It turned out good and showed its puff.

I keep craving myself with this steamed bread. This is my childhood favorite snacks / meals. My mom makes a good Man Tou, very beautiful and round shape. I learned this method from her.  We baked this Man Tou at my home back at Siantar, North Sumatra - Indonesia. In this method, we do not do bulk fermentation. We just give the dough final proofing.

The weekend is coming ❤❤ How about Doughnuts?? I love doughnut but if I think about the fat and calorie of a doughnuts. It drives me nuts. But my heart said let me do my first trial of making my self a doughnut. Time for having something fancy for the weekend. I was thinking to make doughnut with my sourdough starter. Because here in Kolkata it is rare to find dry yeast. I used the local flour / maida which is all purpose flour.

Simple bread in my kitchen - straight method It needs very easy ingredients as well. This is pretty simple bread because it is not very high hydration, it is just 70%. And if you love higher hydration, you may use 730 ml water for 73% hydration dough.

Making bread needs time so just takes your time, no hurry, the nature will help you as well. Another experiment of my bread kitchen with fold and stretch method. It is Sourdough bread with rye flour and white flour

Starter is basically natural yeast consist of flour and water. It needs time, air and feedings in order to grown up become stronger yeast for baking bread. The longer it is, the stronger it is and sourer it is. Basic recipe for the starter is 100 gr rye flour or strong bread flour or whole wheat flour 100 ml water this is the common recipe that people use to make starter. In this video, I show you the consistency mixture of flour and water (Sourdough Starter)