My Self-Isolation Diary

So from today, I am officially working from home. 🏠 In the past weekend, my daily routine has been reduced to meals, sleeping and binge watching TV (Not that it’s hugely different from the usual haha! 😂) I also set an aim for myself to update the blog as often as I could now that my schedule has freed up more. Hope you all are also doing well! Remember to keep on staying positive and look after each other! 😊

With more than enough time now to spare, this calls for time for some bread making! 🍞🥖🥯 Usually, I can be a bit impatient with the dough, but this morning, I was telling myself to wait patiently for it to rise 😌 (whist answering emails in between! 😝) The bread rolls came out rather well (maybe just a tad under-proved) and the smells of fresh bread from the oven really did lift my appetite up as I got slightly lost track of time on the computer. (Thank god, I didn’t burnt them lol!)

The recipe I used is inspired by the bread rolls recipe in ‘How To Make Bread’ by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. (For those of you who have followed me from before, you may know I absolutely love this book! It’s quite a perfect gift for some self-isolation bread making haha! 😂)

Bread Rolls

Quantity: 4 Bread Rolls

Ingredients:

200g / 1½ cups strong white/bread flour

4g / ¾ tsp salt

3g / 1 tsp dried/active dry yeast

130g / ½ cup warm water

Method:

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
2. Place the yeast in a large mixing bowl. Add the warm water and stir until the yeast has dissolved.
3. Add the flour mixture to the yeast mixture. Mix until you form a dough.
4. Cover and let it stand for 10 minutes.
5. After the 10 minutes, knead the bread by pulling a portion of the dough up from the side and press it into the middle. Repeat this process with another portion of the dough and repeat another eight times.
6. Cover the dough again and let it stand for 10 minutes.
7. Repeat steps 5-6 for two more times.
8. Knead the bread one last time (In total, you should have kneaded four times.)
9. Cover the dough and let it rest for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
10. After the rising, punch it down gently with your fist to release air.
11. On a lightly floured surface, flatten and divide the dough into four equal portions.
12. Roll between your hand until you get perfectly smooth, round balls.
13. Place them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Cover and let them rise until slightly less than double in size – about 15-20 minutes.
14. While waiting for them to finish rising, preheat the oven to 240C/475F/Gas 9, or as high as your oven would go.
15. Bake the rolls for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown and the rolls make a hollow sound when tap at the bottom.
16. Once the bread rolls are ready, set them on a wire rack to cool.

Bread on its own is definitely kind of bland though, right? 🤔 So I cooked up a delicious brunch by serving the rolls with some delicious corned beef scrambled eggs (a childhood classic of mine whilst growing up visiting cafés in Hong Kong) and butter of course! 🤤🤤

This leaves me with only one egg 🥚 left in the house though.😕 Hopefully I can find some in shops tomorrow…😐 Want to bet on it? 😂