BFF Focaccia

I thought I'd share my focaccia recipe, since that was what I made last weekend, and what we just ate for breakfast this morning. The first focaccia I ever made was using a breadmaker, following the recipe in the recipe booklet that came with the machine. It turned out well enough for me to fall in love with focaccia as a type of bread, so when I came across this focaccia recipe in The Best of Betterbaking.com, I had to try it.

This has been my go-to focaccia recipe since. First, it was just roasted garlic and rosemary. Then, a friend made focaccia and gave me a thick slab, stuffed full of sundried tomatoes, olives, caramelized onions and slatherings of olive oil. So a jar of sundried tomatoes and a jar of olives came to lodge (permanently) in my fridge, because who knows when you'll want to have foccacia? 

Loaves and loaves later, after artisanal bakeries and trendy cafes started blooming all over Singapore, I began encountering loaves of focaccia other than the ones which emerge from my oven. Wow, fancy focaccias with exotic toppings! For a moment, I felt silly - to have loaf in, loaf out, put together the very same focaccia time and time again. I suddenly felt like a Super Boring Person. I mean, why didn't I even think to try a different kind of focaccia? 

In response, I googled "authentic focaccia", and made a mental note that a friend had done focaccia with biga, and that since that sounds Italian, I should give it a go. Especially with my recent (re)discovery of the wonders of preferment. One sunny morning, figs were in season and therefore on sale and said hello to me during grocery shopping. And so a loaf of fresh fig focaccia transpired the next day. There was even the time I ventured so far as to bake a loaf of grape schiacciata. 

They were alright... but not as good as that focaccia, chewy, crusted with semolina and studded with savoury bits of sundried tomatoes and olives I'd come to love. Who says fancy is best? We all know what they say about that seasoned pair of jeans we've worn for the past ten years... and which we still regard as our favourite pair. That's how it is with this recipe - my favourite focaccia. Best friends forever!

Focaccia with Olives and Sundried Tomatoes
Adapted from The Best of Betterbaking.com
Ingredients:
1 cup lukewarm water (should be slightly warm to the touch)
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tbsp honey
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp semolina
1 tbsp italian herbs (dried)
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups bread flour
Olive oil, for drizzling
Semolina, for dusting
50 g sundried tomatoes, diced
50 g pitted green olives, diced
6-8 large cloves of garlic, roasted in their skins, diced
Salt and pepper

Hand-whisk the yeast and water in the bowl wherein you will be kneading the dough, and let it stand for 2 minutes.

Add the honey, salt, olive oil, semolina, herbs, and flours. Mix, then knead to form a soft elastic dough (I use my trusty KitchenAid. This forms a soft-ish dough, so it's hard to obtain the windowpane texture, especially with the presence of all-purpose flour with its lower gluten content, but don't worry. You'll know the dough is ready when it feels like your earlobe when a bit of it is pinched between your floured thumb and index finger. Mix in the tomatoes, olives, and garlic.

Once the dough is ready, leave it in a large, lightly oiled mixing bowl for 45 min, until almost doubled.

Next, give the dough a good punch-down. Simply punch out all the gas. Let it rest for a further 15 min. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees celcius. Prepare the baking sheet or pan you would be using by dusting generously with semolina.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly oiled worktop, and shape it however you please. Generally, this involves pressing the dough out to about a 1 inch thickness into your desired shape.

I like my focaccia as a single ovalish, rustic-looking loaf, but you might like to use a rectagular/square pan instead, so you can end up with focaccia squares instead of 4 odd-shaped pieces...

Finally, dimple the dough with your finger all over, and drizzle extra virgin olive oil generously all over, letting olive oil pool in the indentations. Season with salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

Bake for about 15 min (this is for a single loaf of focaccia. If you're having two smaller loaves, you'd probably need to check after 12 min).

Let cool on a cooling rack before cutting. Enjoy the oliv-ey goodness waft through your house and pretend you're in Tuscany...

Banana Nut Bread

My dad-in-law absolutely loves bananas. And he's also absolutely sweet when it comes to obliging his only daughter-in-law. All I did was ask for three bananas (I needed them for a smoothie but didn't have any), and he gave me a whole hand of them. That's the inspiration for this bread. I needed to use up the bananas fast!

Or maybe, I didn't. I could just have waited till they were mostly black and ready to be made into banana nut cake, or banana crunch muffins, or chunked and frozen, ready for the next smoothie.

But I was going to bake a loaf of bread, not the quickbread version of banana nut bread, with butter, and tasting more like cake. It was for breakfast, which meant that it had to aim to be more reminiscent of wholesomeness, rather than indulgent pampering. Of course, I do understand that some mornings, what we do need is indeed indulgent pampering. Never mind, we'll save that for another day.

And so, here is my yeasted version of banana nut bread, specifically: honey wheatgerm banana bread with pecans and dates. Ever since my discovery of preferment, I've more or less given up the straight dough method, as breads made with preferments are just so much better - unless you're eating freshly made bread within a couple of hours of its exit from the oven. Not a luxury I currently have! But bread baking with preferment is a luxury to me, too, due to the sheer amount of time the whole process takes. So I have been relying on the next best alternative : a water-roux, or tangzhong starter. Texture and softness wise, it's not bad.

Just out of the oven. Love the poof! 

Banana Nut Bread (Adapted from Christine's Recipes)

For the dough:
310 g bread flour
40 g toasted wheatgerm
5-6 g (2 tsp) yeast
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp + 2 tsp honey
120 g tangzhong (Directions on how to make this are available at Christine's site)
125 ml milk
1 egg (You'll also need a little more beaten egg for egg wash)
30 g butter, cut into small cubes

For the filling: 
A handful of chopped pecan nuts
2 just-ripe bananas, cut into small chunks
A handful of dates, diced

Knead : Place the dry ingredients in the bowl of your freestanding mixer, and make a well in the centre. Add everything else into the well, except the butter. Knead for 5 min until a smooth dough is formed. Add the butter and keep on kneading till all the butter is incorporated. Keep on kneading till the windowpane texture is achieved. Throw in the chopped pecans, and mix briefly.

First proof : Form the dough into a ball and place it in an oiled, large mixing bowl. Cover with a damp tea towel and let it proof for 40 min in a warm place. It should double in size.

Punch down and rest: After 40 min, punch the air out of the dough and shape it into four even balls. Leave to rest for 10 min.

Shape : Roll each ball out into an oval, and sprinkle the banana chunks and dates on. Roll up tightly, and place in a loaf tin. Repeat for the other three balls.

Final proof : Leave to proof for a final 40 min, with the tea towel draped over. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius. Just before placing into the oven, brush the top of the loaf with beaten egg.

Bake : Bake for 30-40 min, checking if it is done after 30 min. Do also check the colour of the crust; I found that mine was bronze enough just after 10 min, and I had to place a sheet of aluminum foil over it as a result to prevent further darkening of the crust. When the loaf has a shiny bronzed color, and sounds hollow when rapped on the bottom of the tin, it's done.

 A pre-slicing pic

Stuffed and swirled with chunky, oozy banana date goodness!

Just so you know, patient reader

It is so much easier to dream, than to do. Each day, almost every waking hour, my mind is inspired by ideas and more ideas - more than I could ever keep track of, especially since keeping track has never been my forte. Ever since that last post two weeks ago, determined to revive this little blog, I seem to have been thinking in terms of posts - and there have been many, ranging from the latest kitchen tips and tricks, to a growing pile of children's books to introduce, to more serious musings from recent life lessons. 

At first, it was fun, but now that the adrenaline has worn off, and the pressure of some impending real-life deadlines draw near, I just feel like I'm now left with a pile of rubble. To honest truth is, I have just not been able to find the time to write posts, when I did have things to say (no matter how frivolous they seemed). Hours are spent at work, keeping house or cleaning, spending time with loved ones, attending dance classes, grocery shopping, eating, or reading. Taking time out to write amidst all that, almost feels like a waste - like I am forgoing real life for something insubstantial. Time spent writing = less time available for real life. What's worse, some of the ideas about which I had wanted to write have become so over-rehearsed in my mind, that they feel like a loaf of stale bread, no longer fit for eating. 

So here I am, writing this, instead of a post about the adventures with baking chocolate marbled bread and marble butter cake, instead of sharing with you my thoughts after Sunday service last week, instead of uploading blow by blow pictures of how we pruned our basil plant yesterday and ended up making and giving away jars of delicious pesto. 

It might have been easier to keep radio silence - after all, hasn't that been more the norm than the exception since the unannounced appearance of the first post? Yet somehow, I feel a sense of unexplainable accountability to my most-likely non-existent readers. 

Wasn't that a really beating-round-the-bush way of saying "I'm lagging!" or "I'm on a hiatus!"? Yet, truth be told that neither of those truly describes what's happening here. 

'Cos I'm still writing, just more slowly than I'd like. And I'm not lagging, just having trouble deciding on what to write about, and what's worth writing about.

As is the case for growing Kaffir Lime leaves. No amount of rushing will do.

Nor the sliced fish soup!

First,  a recap. This blog was started after Tim packed me a box of handmade onigiri, stuffed full with pork floss and love for lunch one day in graduate school. These were the onigiri which have been receiving ill-deserved credit since then of being the reason for this blog. Well, they had a part to play, to give credit where credit is due. But only in part. 

It was really the desire to do a little more deliberate noticing, and the realization that I really should not be waiting for the perfectly authored book before doing a little bit of writing. To be honest, the silence here had largely stemmed from bouts of blogger's block, and those sneaky thoughts that I had nothing much worth writing about. What's worse, there was the stupendous lie that my life was just not worth writing about compared to others' tales of parenting, travels, and etc. 

Until today, and a meal of very bleah sliced fish soup I cooked for lunch. For some reason the ingredients for a rich, savory broth eluded me, and the commonsense kitchen wisdom which usually guides me as I navigate fridge shelves and pots and pans took to the wind. So right after lunch, I settled down on the soft with my iPad to do a little research - on recipes for sliced fish soup. 

Whether or not I found the perfect sliced fish soup recipe is beside the point; but I did stumble upon a blog of a friend, L, who I didn't know had a blog! (She had posted a recipe on her blog for "Best Fish Head Bee Hoon", how could I ignore that?) Reading her posts, I felt resonance, because in her writing, the seemingly ordinary bits of her life were at once transformed and instead shown as precious gifts received by a grateful heart: serendipitously, exactly what I had envisioned for this blog too. And so here I am! 

Funny, that pot of bland sliced fish soup! I had been very annoyed about it, but feel nothing but thankfulness now!

The majesty of their potential

School-dependent students are... like swans born out of and never put into the water. They exist denied the element conducive to their learning, the element in which they belong. They spend their school years thinking that the awkward, unskilled existence they experience on the unsupportive terrain of the classroom is just what they were born to - the way it's supposed to be. They never learn to swim because they have been deprived of their element and have had no models... Not only do these swans/students not know how to swim, but a ceiling is placed above them that inhibits them from learning to fly as well. If they ever get the chance to see the water, the element that would be conducive to their learning, they experience a sense of instinctive familiarity. When this happens, many of them wait for the teacher who will glide confidently toward them, inviting them into that element that could support their learning. Sadly, sometimes even with an invitation, many of these students will not enter the element because even though they are instinctively drawn to the water, they have never learned to swim. Out of fear they hold back, because they feel more comfortable ambling awkwardly and unskillfully on the unsupportive terrain, never experiencing the majesty of their potential... These students adapt to the learned "futility" - eternally waiting to excel. But if just one teacher persists in extending to these individuals an invitation into the element in which they belong, and if that teacher confidently models the majestic movement that can happen within that element, the students may find themselves building the courage to step in. 

Yvette Jackson, The Pedagogy of Confidence, p. 168

Wider and wider

source

The rich may get richer, but let this not be at the expense of the poor.

"... the provision of 'maximum opportunities or self-fulfillment' in gifted programs is what nurtures the traits that generate the demonstration of strengths of 'giftedness'. In other words, gifted behavior or high intellectual performance is developed when strategies and opportunities are provided that bridge learning to interests and abilities, elicit gifted behaviors and habits of mind, expose students to content that builds their frames of reference and engages exploration, support development of the requisite skills to strengthen cognition and enable self directed learning, and provide opportunities for the application of learning in authentic and meaningful ways...  What happens when these are the goals for all students?" - Yvette Jackson, The Pedagogy of Confidence (p. 25) (italics mine)

Believe, and be satisfied

I was having a conversation with a dear friend on relationships today. As many of us often do, we contemplated the question of "how will we know we are ready?" At some point, it was brought to mind a handwritten note of encouragement given to me by a precious friend during my secondary school days, M. I remember reading the note over and over again. I could not have known then how much I would have needed to hear its message again and again in the years to come, for these words to take root deep in my spirit. I may be married now, but this is a message I nonetheless need to keep on hearing, again and again - to cherish my relationship with the Lover of my Soul above all else. 

Everyone longs to give themselves completely to someone. To have a deep soul relationship with another, to be loved thoroughly and exclusively. But God says: 

"No, not until you're satisfied and fulfilled and content with the life I've blessed you with, loved by Me alone. Not until you have learnt to give yourself totally and unreservedly to Me, to have an intensely personal and unique relationship with Me alone.

"I love you, My child, and until you discover that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found, you will not be capable of the perfect human relationship that I have planned for you. You will never be truly united with another until you are united with Me -- exclusive of anyone or anything else, exclusive of any other desires or longings.

"I want you to stop planning, stop wishing, and allow Me to bring it to you. You just keep watching Me, expecting the greatest things. Keep learning and listening to the things I tell you. You must wait.

"Do not be anxious and do not worry. Do not look around at the things you think you want. Just keep looking off and away up to Me, or you'll miss what I have to show you.

"And then, when you're ready, I'll surprise you with a love far more wonderful than any you cold ever dream of. You see, until you are ready and until the one I have for you is ready, and I am working this minute to have both of you ready at the same time - until you are both satisfied exclusively with Me and the life I've prepared for you, you will not be able to experience the love that exemplifies your relationship with Me, and this is perfect love.

"And dear one, I want you to have this most wonderful love. I want you to see in the flesh a picture of your relationship with Me, and to enjoy materially and concretely the everlasting union of beauty and perfection and love that I offer you with Myself. Know I love you. I am God Almighty, believe and be satisfied."

- Author anonymous (retrieved from here)

And then I wrote this one today, just for me. And who knows? It could be for you, too. 

I have longed to give of myself completely. To be a mother to children; to nurture and love deeply and unconditionally, and to be loved and leaned upon in return. But in His love, God says:


"No, not until you're satisfied and fulfilled and content with the life I’ve blessed you with, loved by Me alone and giving yourself totally and unreservedly to Me, having an intensely personal and unique relationship with Me alone.


"I love you, My child, and until you discover that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found, you will not be capable of being the mother I want you to be. You will

not have the resources to love unconditionally, until you have known my unconditional love for you. You will not have the courage to be the bosom upon which a completely vulnerable baby leans and depends, until you have learned to be courageous in me. 

"I want you to stop planning, stop wishing, and allow Me to bring it to you. Keep watching Me, expecting the greatest things. Keep learning and listening to the things I tell you. You must wait.

"Do not be anxious and do not worry. Do not look around at the things you think you want. Do not look at what I have given to others. Look to me always, or you'll miss what I have to show you.

"And then, when you're ready, I will surprise you with a gift far more wonderful than any you could have dreamed of. You see, until both of you are ready, and I am working this minute to have both of you ready at the same time, and until you are both satisfied exclusively with Me and the life I've prepared for you, you won't be able to love the child I will give you with love that exemplifies your relationship with Me - perfect love.

"And dear one, I want you to have this most wonderful love. I want you to see in the flesh a picture of your relationship with Me, to enjoy materially and concretely the everlasting union of beauty and perfection and love that I offer you with Myself, and to see that union and love bear fruit – for my sake. Know I love you. I am God Almighty, believe and be satisfied."

- Adapted with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, just for me