Baking bread

Turning the hard seeds of grains into edible food is surely one of the oldest, and in many ways, one of the most satisfying things to do in terms of nutrition. And, may I say it, the best meals I've ever had have been something simple along the lines of bread and cheese, bread fresh from an oven with a cup of coffee or tea, or simply bread and water.

And of course, there is such a variety of bread - sourdough, rye, milk, ciabatta, pumpernickel...

One of the things that has happened since coming to Korea is the change I've seen in the bakery, or have I? Have my tastes simply adapted to theirs? Sorry, let me start at the beginning of this story.

Coming from Cape Town, with its huge multi-cultural population, you are able to fill a basket, nay a bushel, with bread. Soft, hard, fried, baked - all shapes and sizes. And, dare I say it, some of the tastiest options available in the wheat to bread range. Cape Seed Loaf, white dinner rolls, ciabatta, naan, rye - both dark and light, vetkoek (deep fried rolls) and the good old traditional standby, the sandwich loaf. In Korea, at least at first, my complaint and that of many of my feloow expats, was the lack of bread! See, in Korea you have the word 'pang' - and this covers bread, cake and any other thing made in a bakery!

Problem was, it tasted like that as well. The bread was fluffy and too sweet for bread, the cake was fluffy and not sweet enough to be cake. Moreover, if you bought a baguette (if you found a place that made them like the ubiquitously named Paris Baguette chain of bakeries), you got given a tub of the same sweetened cream that got spread on the cakes to have with it.

However, as I say, things seem to have changed. These days the bread is more like bread, and the cakes - well, they look really good but are still just whipped air and cream. In Seoul, especially, there are a lot of places these days where you can actually get some sourdough bread, and in Iteawon is a little pizza place that does proper ciabatta.

As you have gathered by now, I love bread! I also like baking. And if you head over to my other blog, South Korean Experiences, you'll see I recently made some apple jelly. Which called for some really good bread. Without me heading into Seoul.

I decided to try my hand, once again, at baking. Now don't get me wrong, I have baked many loaves of bread and they always satisfy me in some way, even if only in taste, but I usually rush the process and so I never end up with perfectly risen bread, something I'd share with someone else. They taste good, they just don't look very good.

I decided that what I was lacking was patience, so this time I tried it. I dissolved the dried yeast in warm water with a little sugar and salt, and set it close to the heater and waited - yes, waited - until I saw bubbles and foam. About an hour or so? Then I mixed this with my flour (I did half and half rye and white), some more sugar and salt and some olive oil. This got kneaded, then set aside for 10 hours - the time it took me to get to work and get back home again. The risen dough got punched down, shaped into the loaf tin, then set aside for another 3 hours, by which time it had doubled in volume (yay!) and it finally went into the oven for an hour.

The warm end crust was eaten fresh out of the oven with some butter and jelly, and this morning the first slice was eaten with coffee...and it was everything I had hoped for. It not only tasted good, but actually looked like bread.

So, in future, my bread recipe will call for a generous helping of patience, as well as all the other stuff I'll be putting into it.