Bread Week: Paul Hollywood's Ciabatta

We discovered this week that making bread requires having the precise ingredients and following the recipe perfectly. Pretty much being perfect Paul Hollywood is the only way to achieve ideal Ciabatta. We also discovered that our knowledge of Ciabatta extended to the bread they serve at Carabbas (our small American Wonder Bread minds, have no clue if that even is Ciabatta) One contestant's American judges even compared her Ciabatta to Carabbas' (pretty impressive right?). We Americans love getting that free fresh bread at restaurants because really free things just taste better and all of our preservative filled bread pales in comparison.

Ciabatta courtesy of BBC Food

Europeans know what they're doing when it comes to bread and some of us truly appreciated that by eating a whole loaf of Ciabatta in one sitting this week. There were even some toddler meltdowns when 4 pieces of Ciabatta was just not enough.

This week we went through a lot of yeast troubles and bread shaping issues. Beware of using yeast if you are inspired by our post, because some places have a yeast curse like Bosnia where dough will never rise no matter how many kind words that you say to it (everyone talks to their bakes right?).

This bake made some of us think that we would see a hint of a smile on Paul's face after presenting our bread to him while it made others long for Iain to throw their's in the bin before Paul could even begin to think about shattering their baking hopes and dreams with a smirk. 

First Baker: Megan

My Thoughts: So in case you didn't know Ukraine is the bread basket of Europe (which I'm sure you didn't because I wasn't even positive where Ukraine was located on a map before I came to teach here but I am the worst at geography). The bottom half of the Ukrainian flag even represents a wheat field so bread is a pretty big deal here. This means that making fresh bread here is a waste because the bread section (not bakery but just bread) in a grocery store takes up what seems like a quarter of the store. Even though it was pointless for me to make bread, it was a pretty easy process since obviously yeast is always happy in Ukraine.

             

                   The bread section in a grocery store here in Ukraine and of course there is fresh baked Ciabatta there for like 50 cents a loaf.

I must say that I did feel like a true Bake-Off contestant for this technical as I was sitting in front of my finnicky Ukrainian oven waiting for my bread to turn that perfect golden brown. I had to watch it carefully because I had left my only cookie sheet at school, which meant that I had to bake my bread on my oven rack/faux cookie sheet (luckily all Ukrainian ovens have a shelf that acts as a tray). The cookie sheet shelf did end up scorching my parchment paper but my bread turned out the perfect color (also knocking on bread to check for doneness is something that I had never heard of before GBBO, oh the glorious knowledge you can gain).

The normal ingredients pic plus my cookie sheet oven rack with unbaked loaves, an explosion of dough due to that extremely happy yeast, and my true Bake Off moment 

Result: One whole loaf of the warm bread, fresh out of the oven, may or may not have been gobbled up by me and my roommate in like 10 minutes. So clearly it was a hit or maybe we just love carbs.

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: The judges thought that the bread was gorgeous and delicious. They said that the crust on the outside was not too hard to where it would cut your mouth up but not too soft either. The inside was described as fluffy and not too dense. All 4 judges thought that it was a nice white bread that would pair well with Italian dishes and the only criticism was some misshapen loaves. One judge may have even finished their whole loaf in one evening.

Average Taste Score: 9

Average Appearance Score: 9.5

 Second Baker: Stephanie

My Thoughts: The dreaded bread week. Only four ingredients, what could go wrong, right? HAH! If ingredients could have characteristics yeast would be a spiteful little...well...we decided this was a family friendly blog. So I'll just say that yeast has a vendetta against my house and hardly ever cooperates here. But I was determined to prevail over it this time! After much researching and google translating, I went out on another ingredient hunt. Standing in the aisles of our local German drug store I am sure I looked like a crazy person muttering to myself while I did some more converting, translating, and straight up guessing on which type of flour and semolina (not to be confused with spirulina, which would make for some interesting bread) to buy. Stay in school kids, you'll need those math and language skills some day for a baking competition with your friends. But I digress.
There was a promising first prove where my dough seemed to rise..
And then because the dough is such a wet dough I needed lots of flour, and I had to use lots of pans because none of mine were the right size, my kitchen became this flour war zone.

Actual footage of me in my kitchen baking bread

In the end I think my loaves were pretty uniform, and definitely had the right sound when you knocked on the bottom of them, but I was disappointed in the rise. I think that was due to the flour I used. Later in the week when I tried again with All Purpose flour the result was much better. 

Ingredients, a little helper, and some process pictures

Result:

Baby approved

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: This week my Mary was out of town so I had two Pauls. Our friend, a fellow home baker from Wales, was the perfect brutally honest Paul. They agreed that overall the taste wasn't bad, but the rise could have been better because it made it a little more dense and chewy than they would have liked.

Average Taste Score: 7.5

Average Appearance Score: 5.5 

Third Baker: Devin

My Thoughts: I knew this week was going to be rough and I put it off for as long as I could. Let's just start with the facts; I don't own a standing mixer, I've never excelled in math class, and I'm a novice baker. With all that said, I've been really impressed with my bakes so far. I honestly feel so challenged when the instructions include ounces, I can feel the rusty gears moving. I completed the first step and thought, this wasn't so bad. While waiting for the proofing I reread the instructions and of course I had already forgotten the extra amount of water that's suppose to be added drip by drip. I then proceed to try and use my hand mixer. That was abominable. Off with the rings and watch, I'm going in. Not a pleasant experience, but it appears mixed and I think that's rising looks like.  The only person that could help this bread is Sweet Dear Baby Jesus.

Result: What's that burning smell? Oh right...I'm baking bread.

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: This is edible but it is not a ciabatta. It is under proofed and over baked. This might taste good in America, but in Great Britain this is garbage.

Average Taste Score: 7

Average Appearance Score: 5

And the Star Baker receiving that coveted Paul Hollywood handshake is... 

Megan        

         Tune in next week for the only meal that matters... 
It's Dessert Week!

Biscuit Week: Mary Berry's Florentines

All three of us were born and raised in Florida so the words we associate with biscuit are honey, butter, jelly and chicken because, well, Chickfila.

Biscuit week on Bake Off though is something far from our southern roots. This biscuit or cookie (as we Americans call them) did actually include honey (well it was supposed to be golden syrup) and butter but was definitely far too dainty to hold a giant piece of fried chicken on it.

Mary Berry's Florentines - Picture courtesy BBC Food 

The hilarious conversations continued among the three of us with these biscuits. We were all able to commiserate over having to make our own candied orange peel and the preciseness involved in tempering chocolate. Candy thermometers were scrutinized and purchased by some and eye-balling it was employed by others. One of us also weighed out the batter so that they would have 18 perfectly sized cookies while the other twos cookies ranged from tiny to giant (clearly one of us has the precise skills to be on bake off while the other two should probably stay far away from Paul's critical eyes).

The best thing to come out of this bake was the realization that they sell these cookies at Trader Joes. So really this whole process could have been avoided by one contestant and the other two would have been none the wiser.

First Baker: Megan

My Thoughts: First things first, surprisingly I do not own a candy thermometer and when I realized that there were two things in this recipe that required one, I thought it might be time to invest in one. I had wondrous plans to go to a few stores and look for one but after having to go to work at the school on a Sunday those plans were dashed (working on the weekends is the worst). The grocery store near me didn't have one so I left feeling confident I could make it work without the candy thermometer (the confidence coming mostly from The Greatest Showman soundtrack as I marched along the street singing "This is me" on my walk home). Miraculously I was able to accomplish candied orange peels and somewhat tempered chocolate without a candy thermometer and everyone really loved the florentines (minus the one judge who is not a candied orange fan). I really did like the blend of all of the flavors in this cookie and while I am mostly not a fan of orange and chocolate at least this bake included chocolate (also if you ever have leftover melted chocolate, dip some marshmallows in it or just eat it by the spoonful and all your worries of improperly sized florentines will disappear).

My most proud moments to my least proud in this collage, starting with my ingredients picture and ending with Florentines that I had to cut the burnt edges off of. I was definitely way more proud of those marshmallows than those zigzags. 

Result: My florentines turned out all different shapes and sizes and were way tinier than they should have been (this was due to my following the garbage directions of 1 teaspoonful of batter). I think my oven temperature was partly to blame as Ukrainian ovens still have not gone digital and therefore I am constantly playing "guess the temperature" with my oven knob only showing increments of 40 degress. Also I started to do zigzags on mine and hated them so I decided Paul and Mary would put me in last place anyways so why put in the extra effort to make them uglier.

This is me trying to fool Paul and Mary into believing they are all the same size which I would totally do on the Bake Off but in reality I know I could never get anything past those two with their rulers and perfect palates.

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: Most of the judges loved the chocolate and orange combination except for one. They said that the nuts in the cookies made them complete. The judges actually liked the small size of the cookies but I may have failed to show them a picture of what on actual florentine looks like.

Average Taste Score: 8.5

Average Appearance Score: 6

Second Baker: Stephanie

My Thoughts: Again, looking at this recipe my first comments in our group text were "I don't think I have any of the ingredients here." It ended up not being too bad, I subbed honey for golden syrup and surprisingly enough found Demerara sugar (like sugar in the raw) at the store here! The real challenge and fun of this recipe was making the candied orange peel. Thankfully there my baker instincts kicked in and with the help of a good candy thermometer, half of my batch turned out like it was supposed to, and I was mostly proud of myself for not burning my tongue trying the syrup...as I may or may not have a tendency of doing. I definitely need to work on my chocolate tempering skills, which lead to another string of funny messages sent to the group as I tried to do it in the open refrigerator, and on a package of frozen berries. There was great lamenting on why one of us didn't have a large marble kitchen island that we could be doing all of this on....one day! I don't think I would have gotten points for my chocolate because it hardened too quickly making my zig zags a little rough and there wasn't a ton of shine. The cookies were pretty decently uniform, and had a good crunch to them, with still a lot of chew, and I enjoyed the fruity/nut taste combo, so I was pretty satisfied!

All the prep of making the candied orange peels, my attempts at cooling my chocolate faster, and all the ingredients

Result:

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: My "Paul" was thorough as ever and said that the proportions were great, he could taste all the flavors, overall it was delicious but he wasn't a huge fan of the chocolate. Originally he thought the presentation wasn't the prettiest, but when he saw a picture of the originals changed his mind and said they looked exactly like the photos. He didn't know the zig zags were purposeful haha.  My Mary appreciated the almond flavor. My pastor, who is sadly not one of the judges, ate three of them, raved about them and was sad there weren't more, so we'll call it an overall win!

Average Taste Score: 8

Average Appearance Score: 7.5

Third Baker: Devin

My Thoughts: I was so excited to make these, they were a favorite recipe of mine. I just wanted to eat them all, but of course I'm trying to complete my first Whole30. So, I blindly made candied peel, which is something I swore I would never want to do again. I planned ahead this time. While the peel was candying, I prepped all my ingredients and put them into baggies, no cute ramekins for me. One thing I wish that I would have remembered is that because of the sugar content the color would brown faster but it wasn't burning. They looked pretty good, but by the end of baking I had some pretty oddly shaped florentines. I just ended up slapping the chocolate on the bottom. I kept my fingers crossed for some rave reviews.

The dreaded candied peel and the forbidden cookies

Result: My lazy chocolate skills seeped through the lacy design which some said made the chocolate taste overwhelming. The citrus flavor really came through and had no bitterness.

Get in my belly!!

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: No uniformity, but I can see that the lace was beginning to form. A failed attempt at the zigzag pattern. (Takes a bite) No crunch, kind of chewy but the taste is there. It could have used a few minutes more in the oven, they are missing the snap.

Average Taste Score: 8

Average Appearance Score: 7

And the Star Baker for Biscuit Week is...

Stephanie

Tune in next week to see us take on the King of Bread's recipe!
                   

Cake Week: Mary Berry's Cherry Cake

We are beginning our technical bake off across 3 different countries with Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake. Mary Berry describes this cake as “a lovely cherry sponge with a little extra texture from the ground almonds,” which sounds so poetic.

 The American way to describe this cake is a lemon cherry almond bundt cake because well we just give it to you straight without the added fluff (who has time for fluff when you need to get back to scrolling through Instagram). If we had our way then we would have Mary write these blog posts because clearly every word would be dripping with sophistication and class. Since Mary hasn’t returned our e-mails, we must forge ahead telling you about our cake and candied cherries instead of our lovely sponge and glacé cherries (we will try to insert these more sophisticated terms throughout our technical blog posts as we want to try and make Mary proud).

So here is the first step on our journey of ten technical challenges. We had some mishaps and some successes but in the end we seemed to realize that the Brits have simple recipes which need to be executed precisely in order to get that perfect result. You will get to see how our ingredients varied between each country and how our stand in Mary Berry’s and Paul Hollywood’s rated us.

This first technical led to many chats which ranged from discussing how legitimate yellow and green cherries are, to math (since America has to be difficult by not using grams as a standard for measurement). Glacé cherries were discussed at length and had to be homemade by two of us who don’t live with the convenience of American specialty stores. We laughed over mallets being used to ground almonds and cried over broken sponges (cakes for you Americans reading) and burnt almonds (no tears were actually shed during this baking process but almonds were definitely harmed).

First Baker: Megan

My thoughts: This cake seemed super simple to make because the directions were literally to just throw everything into a bowl and mix it, then add your floured cherries. Making those glace cherries on the other hand was a long process that made me dream of the convenience of hopping in my car and driving to the glorious land of Publix. I also love finding random gems here in Kiev such as yellow maraschino cherries. so when I found them I just had to buy them in order to candy them for this cake. All in all, any dessert that is not chocolate, is not worth the calories in my opinion, so this was not the cake for me. I did think though that the contrast of the sour lemon with the sweet cherries and nuttiness of the almonds made for a well balanced sponge.

My Ukrainian ingredients including those lovely yellow cherries, my mess of a kitchen in the process and the unfrosted sponge

Result: 

Fake Paul and Mary thoughts: The judges thought it was a little dense (which I attributed to the almonds but maybe I over mixed it) but that the fruit was evenly distributed and it was refreshing. One judge was craving Stollen (German bread with candied fruit) the day before, and after having this cake their craving was satisfied so that seemed like a win to me.

Best Review

Average Taste Score: 8

Average Appearance Score: 7

Second Baker: Stephanie 

My Thoughts: Right off the bat we have a recipe that required a little more work since I'm in a Bosnian kitchen. I had to make my own glace cherries (glorified maraschino cherries), ground my own almonds and caster sugar, and make my own version of self-rising flour. Phew. But everything else was relatively simple. I think I made a mistake when adding the baking powder right before tossing the butter on top of it, so it didn't incorporate, and I didn't get a good rise at all! There was some crumbling of the cake, and some gloopiness of icing, and a complete lack of desire to slice and toast almonds, that made me realize I need to really concentrate on my presentation next week. I was, however, pretty blown away by the flavor. It was the perfect amount of lemon, and I loved it!

(Leftover homemade cherry syrup, cake ready to go in, broken/unrisen cake, and starting ingredients)

Result:

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: My Paul is my hard to please husband, Craig. He said this was one of the top 5 favorite things I've ever baked for him! He also loved getting to comment on the "sponge" which he thought was a little dry, but said overall it was not too sweet, not too tart, and the perfect amount of lemon. My other judge said it's " a 10/10 for what it is but I don't have a lot to compare it to." We need to work on expanding these judges horizons.

Average Taste Score: 8.5

Average Appearance Score: 6

Third Baker: Devin

My Thoughts: Everything about this recipe seemed relatively simple and straightforward... until I actually started the bake. For the record this is my first cake made from scratch. It was exciting but a little overwhelming. Thank heavens I just recently watched all of the episodes so they are still fresh in my mind. It started simply enough but as I started mixing the texture of the cake seemed so odd. Then it hit me.... I had left out the eggs. If emojis were allowed in sophisticated blogs, right now would be when I posted the lady slapping her face. Once that was corrected, everything seemed right in the world until I remembered there was absolutely no zest in the cake. I'm definitely on the bottom for this week. Overall, I'm just happy that I didn't pull an Iain.

Notice there are no eggs in the bottom picture of ingredients

Result: The Cherry Cake made it safely to work. It was much smaller than it should have been, but the cherries were dispersed nicely and you could taste the almonds clearly. I believe it didn't rise to the occasion because of the missing egg issue.

Fake Paul and Mary's Thoughts: The sponge is delightful, but definitely on the dense side and I'm not getting any hints of the lemon. The cherries could have been smaller and I believe the icing was put on prematurely. Overall, it's alright.

Average Taste Score: 6

Average Appearance Score: 5

And the Star Baker by a narrow margin is...

Megan

             
Tune in next week when we try to tackle British biscuits!