Category: Bread

This is truly the easiest focaccia recipe.

I’ve never in my life made bread. What took me so long? Fear. Why now? Why not? Okay, I confess. I adapted a recipe that claims it’s the easiest. I’m a sucker for titles like that…so here are the ingredients….

  • 1 teaspoon white sugar
  • 10gm of active dry yeast
  • 80ml of warm water
  • 450gm of flour
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon of ordinary salt
  • 4 tablespoons of Rosemary powder (you can of course use fresh rosemary!)
  • 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt

# – In a bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water.

# – Let stand for 10 minutes until creamy. Brace yourself for the stench, lol.

# – Prepare flour and salt in a larger mixing bowl.

# – Combine the yeast mixture with flour; stir well to combine.

# – Add in the Rosemary powder too, for a beautiful fragrance. Stir in additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all of the flour is absorbed.

# – Till it forms a dough that looks something like this. Gently knead it for another minute.

# – Now lightly oil a different bowl or pot and leave the dough inside.

# – Cover the bowl with a damp but clean towel. Leave it for 30 minutes.

# – After 30 minutes, the dough would have doubled in size.

# – Grease a baking tray with olive oil.

# – On a floured surface, deflate the dough and gently knead it for one minute. Then, pat or roll the dough into a sheet and place it onto the greased baking tray.

# – Sprinkle coarse sea salt all over the surface of the dough.

# – A few dashes of black pepper too.

# – And lastly, a sprinkling of rosemary powder all over…

# – With a fork, poke the dough all over.

# – Then, stick it in a pre-heated oven of 245 degrees Celcius for 10-20minutes depending on the desired crispiness. The longer, the crispier. I baked mine for 15 minutes.

# – Easiest focaccia, DONE!

# – Great with olive oil + balsamic vinegar, creamy soup, gravy and my favourite…chopped crabstick mixed with mayo and tabasco sauce. Yums!

This bread freezes really well too. Just wrap it in foil and stick it in freezer. When you want to eat it, take the whole thing out (bread and foil), place it on a shallow baking tray filled with some water (make sure foil has no holes as you don’t want water to seep into the bread), open the foil so top of bread is exposed, and bake at preheated oven at 150 degrees celcius for 10 minutes.

Nothing beats the smell of homemade breads!

Awesomesauce Golden Treasure Puff.

I’m sorry but I have an incurable habit of giving my recipes tacky names. It rained really heavily in the afternoon today so instead of going out for lunch I decided to cook.

As I don’t have many stuff in the pantry, I don’t even have eggs or onions for goodness’ sake, I decided to check those websites that supposedly give you recipes that match the combination of ingredients you have. As it turned out, those websites are pretty useless. Yes, they’ll give you recipes which incorporate the ingredients you have but they also include stuff that you don’t have. Pointless -_-

Anyway, I gave up searching for recipes online and decided to just make something deep-fried. I’ve read an article about a chef before who said that you can eat anything deep-fried, even socks. In all honesty, I’d rather bake than fry but since I don’t have an oven, I had to do what I had to do. I wonder if one can eat baked socks.

Here are the ingredients for making Awesomesauce Golden Treasure Puff:

# – Bread. I used 4 slices because my brains are always hungrier than my stomach.

# – Frankfurters. Half a frank to one slice of bread, so I used only 2.

# – Cheese. I love cheese slices cause they’re so cheap and taste great after being treated with some heat. Like the franks, half a slice to one piece of bread.

# – Butter. You can omit this really since it’s a deep-fried dish but my life wouldn’t be the same without butter.

# – Half a cup of mixed vegetables. Season with black pepper for more bite.

# – Mustard. I’d prefer English mustard for a stronger kick, but beggar can’t be chooser. This will do for now.

# – Cornflour. This is not that important, I’m just using it for the sealant mixture later. You can replace with flour or even egg white.

Now on how to cook this baby…

# – First of all, cut off all the bread crusts. This is important because it’s very hard to seal the puff with the crusts on.

# – Then, flatten the bread slices as much as possible with a rolling pin. As we don’t have a rolling pin in this god-forsaken kitchen, I used a metal ladle to press the bread down.

# – Now butter the flattened bread. Like I said, you can omit this step….but WHY????

# – Next, lay the cheeses on the buttered bread slices.

# – And now, the defining moment of the dish, the mustard. Squeeze a line a mustard on each of the cheese slices.

# – Time to slap some meat on. Place the franks on the cheese slices.

# – Throw in some mixed vegetables for fibre count ;) By the way, becareful not to overstuff, it won’t be a pretty sight when your puff decides to explode in a pot of boiling oil.

# – Right about now, you can make the cornflour sealant. Basically it’s a water and cornflour mixture, just get the consistency gooey enough and you’re good to go.

Ok, now lightly dab the sealant mixture on the edges of the bread and then fold the bread in half and press the edges together. You may use a fork to press down the edges for security but I just use what my Mom gave me.

Wish I had photos to illustrate this step but it’s impossible to seal puffs and maneuver the camera at the same time. Use your imagination and most importantly, common sense, ok?

# – Awesomesauce Treasure Puff. At this point they are not golden yet.

# – By now you should have heated oil in your pot, throw in the Awesomesauce Treasure Puffs and fry till golden brown.

# – Voila! Awesomesauce Golden Treasure Puffs. Those itsy-bitsy stuff clinging onto the puffs are leaked cheese, not very pretty but oh so delicious! You may notice from the uneven colours of the puffs that I have yet to master the deep-frying skills. I intend to improve for future assignments :P

# – It’s so delicious that if I had a male organ, I would be jizzing in my pants. Just imagine: deep fried bread enveloping beef frank and sweet mixed vegetables drowning in melted cheese laced with mustard. I feel like I deserve an award or something.

# – Now, that is a look of pure happiness.

Remember, don’t forget the mustard!