Has the magic gone?

Recently I was crushing on Alex Goh's baking books. I went on to bake twice more using his recipes. The first one was French Baguette from his The World of Bread book. My girl likes to eat baguette with chicken curry and I bravely ventured to bake baguettes for her dinner.

My mother would laugh her head off if she saw these loaves of bread. I had no baking stone and I did not use water bath to create steam. The baguette turned out not great looking as my oven has uneven heating. Taste wise, it's just okay. The dough was made using straight dough method. I've come to realise that bread made using sponge dough and/or gelatisnised dough tastes a lot better.

The kids weren't crazy about the bread. We had leftovers. I had baked each of us one loaf! What was I thinking?

After the slight disappointment from the baguettes, I decided to seek out Alex Goh's other book, Magic Bread. By the way, when I was raving to you guys in this post about Magic Bread by Alex Goh, did you think such a book actually existed? I mean magic bread sounds so um, fake, made up, right? I looked for the book in the library and managed to get a copy!

The best part? The instructions are in English and Chinese!

from Magic Bread

Magic Bread has a recipe for a basic sweet bread dough and I decided to bake Butter Sugar Bread. This recipe uses gelatinised dough together with the main dough.

in goes the gelatinised dough

My sweet buns looked nothing like what was shown in the book. But I love the taste. So good. So addictive.

I used some of the dough to make a loaf bun and it came out very soft inside.

So in conclusion, Magic Bread beats World of Bread, taste wise. In terms of softness, magic bread does have a bit more fluffiness. Magic Bread is no longer sold in Singapore and it is very unlikely you can get it anywhere except Malaysia. If you live in Singapore you can borrow it from the library. Just give me a chance to return the book first!

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of soft white bread. Singaporeans love soft white bread. I prefer the tougher, wholegrain bread. I feel the direction of my learning journey needs to go towards rustic wholegrain.