What the heck is going on with Windows Live? I keep getting emails notifying me of notes sent by random spammers. It's getting annoying.
On a random whim, decided to make bread. I didn't mention this but I've already tried it twice in the past few months. Both failed because I didn't know how to make my mixture into dough. It was always a watery paste that didn't rise.
So I decided this time to forget the recipe and just add water slowly to a third of a bowl of flour. Then I added a third of a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of sugar and 1 satchet of dry yeast. No idea how much flour and water was used and no fats or oil was added as shortening.
It's now 11.57am on the 24th of May, Monday. I've just complete the first part of the process and leaving it to rise for the first time. Did about 5 minutes of kneading the dough before that. Now it's covered by a clean towel (not perfect, a few black spots here and there, but unused since it was washed) and left in my windless kitchen.
Not going to shower despite being very sweaty as usual because I'll need to knead it again after an hour of rising before letting it rise for another half an hour. Then bake.
Another thing is that I didn't put the dough into greased bowl. Instead I left it in the original flour-covered bowl. Hopefully it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't stick.
Kneading dough is tough work. I am unsure if I had removed all the hard bits because I didn't sieve the flour. I'll find out in the afternoon. Now waiting for 1pm.
12.19pm now. I just went to check on it and YES! It's rising! There's now a bulge on the towel and when I lifted it a little I saw that the originally flour-covered surface of the dough is cracking.
1.18pm. Just went to knead it back to its original size. Very elastic now. Took a lot of fisting to squeeze out the air but it's done. Another 30mins of rising and it's ready to be baked. Now waiting for 1.50pm.
4.02pm I'm now eating my bread. Too crusty, not enough salt. A tiny bit burnt at the bottom. Not good but it looks like bread..
This was the process:
A third of a large bowl of flour (the sort of bowl we use for soup) mixed with salt, sugar and yeast, pour in slightly warm water slowly while stirring with a finger.
Eventually I had a piece of dough that I could lift up. When stuck to the bowl, I sprinkled flour generously around it and tried to scrape the small pieces off the bowl.
Knead - squeeze dough with palm downwards, fold into half, repeat. Keep adding flour to reduce stickiness of dough. There's no such thing as too much flour. Excess flour is necessary to keep the dough from sticking. 5mins.
I left it in the same bowl to rise. Of course I had lifted the dough up, poured flour and spread it all over the bowl before putting it back. Left it there after covering the bowl with a clean towel.
1 hour later I kneaded it again. This time I squeezed as much air out as I could. Left it there under the towel again to rise.
45mins later I took it out and placed it in the baking tray, also covered with flour. Left it to rise for another 15mins.
15mins later, I preheated the oven to 225 degrees Celsius for 2-3 minutes before placing the dough inside.
10 minutes later I realized only the bottom heating element was turned on, so I turned the top heating element on too.
30-minutes later it looked well-browned on top so I took it out and knuckled it to confirm it sounded hollow. Then I took it out and waited for it to cool down to a tolerable temperature.
According to my mum, too much yeast, not enough water and not enough butter. Didn't let my bro try. He's not a bread person.
Next time, I'll use more flour, more salt, more water and a bit of margarine. Margarine isn't as good as butter because of its higher water content but it is supposed to work too.
The crust is so hard now that it has cooled down, I can probably fracture skulls with it. Really needs more shortening and less baking.
The worst oil spill in history may be happening right now in the US. It's getting so bad, the US government is threatening to remove BP from its responsibility to clean up the mess because it's currently doing such a bad job of it.
Personally I just think BP's engineers have run out of ideas, that's all.
Anyway the US government also admits that BP is probably the most qualified for the task. So that's basically an empty threat made in frustration.
Just heard about the 3 morons who accidentally hiked into Iran and got caught trespassing the border from Iraq without visas. Morons, nothing more and nothing less. I think they really picked a bad time for it. If they were spies, it's not surprising given that recent news have given us an idea of how spies keep a low profile and look so ordinary. Not to mention that their timing is excellent.
Opentrolley has replied to my email to tell me that I was not charged more than once. Good. If they had billed S$800 I'd have to do something drastic, starting from a serious call to a personal visit to legal consultation.
Now I hope the books arrive by Friday so that I can bring one with me to Malaysia.
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