To the start of artisan bread-making... hopefully

2nd time success at Focaccia bread making

I've been trying my hand at baking recently, specifically bread at that. I used to bake my breads in the bread machine that I found in my MIL's cupboard. But it keeled over one fine day while I was trying to bake a cranberry pecan bread and that ended my bread-making sessions.

Since then, I hadn't made any cos I wasn't too keen on kneading bread by hand -- tried once and my arms ached after. Until most recently. I finally haul out my spiffy KitchenAid that was sitting idle on its side in my kitchen cabinet. I had bought it during my 3rd trimester but hadn't had the chance to use it post-pregnancy.

And so it was, I decided to make sundried tomato focaccia, inspired by the ones that Louis and I have eaten at Pete's Place at Hyatt Hotel. The first time I made it, it was using the recipe from Beth Hensperger's "The Bread Bible". It wasn't too bad for a first time attempt, but the inside of the bread was rather dense, not chewy. I was wondering if it was becos I didn't shift my flour.

Then, I decided to use another recipe from "Baking at home with the Culinary Institute of America". The recipe required an overall longer time for the bread to rise and it also used bread flour as opposed to plain flour in Hensperger's recipe. Lo and behold! The bread turned out to be fantastic with a crispy crust and airy, chewy interior. In fact, it was the best bread that I've ever made!!

Bread-making is definitely very satisfying, seeing how simple ingredients like water, yeast, flour and oil could turn out something so beautiful. Eating a good loaf of bread always brings back memories of our one-year stay in France, where boulangerie abounds and you can get pretty good baguettes wherever you go. In Singapore, the best baguettes so far come from Delifrance, but somehow, they don't keep as well. Whatever that is bought has to be eaten the same day.

Back in France, I used to buy a few loaves of baguette au levin (baguettes that taste a little like sourdour bread) on market days and store them in the freezer, popping them into ovens whenever we wanted some bread. They were good with practically everything, ranging from sandwiches, to pizza, with cheese, as accompaniments to a main meal etc. And they always taste so good. Contrary to popular belief, croissants aren't as popular as baguettes, which were staples to the French like rice is to Asians.

I remembered when we first arrived in France, we were rather amused when we see the French carrying their baguettes everywhere. What shocked us really was that their baguettes are not fully wrapped in neat size packaging like the ones we get in Singapore. Instead, the bakeries would simply wrap a small rectangle or square piece of paper onto the middle of the baguettes, leaving a large part of the 2 ends "naked". And so the French would strolled out of the boulangeries with their baguettes tucked under their arms (hope they don't have smelly armpits), or stuffed into their grocery bags, dumped onto the back seats of their car etc.

After a while, we got used to it and fancied ourselves localised such that we carry our baguettes stuffed into our grocery bags and walk around nonchalantly. Admittedly, we never dared to tuck them under our arms, even though we showered at least twice even in winter.

Thus, for every bread that I successfully bake -- or not -- it never failed to evoke fond memories of Europe and especially, how good the breads were in that part of the world. And we conceded that the French baked the best breads in the world.