Inspiration
"Eccentric and incurably old-fashioned" seems to be a good description. Yes, I think about the past lot, how people lived in old times. Yes, to me it is not the past, but the present.
Today, I made a loaf of bread. It is a simple, satisfying pleasure. I don't do be because I have to, I do it because I love it. I have made this same recipe for country seed and spelt bread into possibly a hundred loaves my now. It is a recipe that is incredibly simple. My mother never believed how easy it was until I moved to Ireland for a year and she started making it herself.
"Wow, it's so easy and it can't go wrong," she told me.
Indeed.
Even when living overseas, I could not stop myself from making bread. I had a mixing bowl, a few measuring cups and spoons and had to get on it with just like the pioneers did. Not that Brennan's bread is no good, it indeed was very good. It's just a part of me, that I want to get my fingers dirty and make bread.
Baking in Ireland was an entirely different experience. Stripped of my luxurious home kitchen, stand mixers, and every tools I could possibly want, I relished the challenge of "making do", and on a budget at that. Pound cakes were painstakingly beaten by hand, bread was kneaded and left to rise overnight by my window and the occasionally-used radiator.
I never had much success with pies in Malaysia. They seemed so difficult and laborious. Pie doughs never, ever behaved. Never rolled out properly. And the amount of butter used (butter is a costly luxury in Malaysia) - why, my thrifty soul recoiled. After all, one could make three trays of scones with the amount of butter it took a make a pie. But butter, good, Irish butter (from Tesco notwithstanding) was plentiful and affordable. Larger, tart and succulent Bramley apples were often on sale for only fifty cents a kilo. No one will convince me that Granny Smith is the superior apple. Bramley is the green apple for pies.
The first, real Blueberry pie I ever made was one I made myself, in Ireland, with half-price blueberries from Aldi. Ah, what a treat. What a sublime privilege, indeed, for blueberries in Malaysia are almost like forbidden fruit. The photograph above is of my windowsill where the pies and breads would sit overnight. Electricity was half-price during the wee morning hours, and that was when I would bake. Bread took half a day to rise, and it often rose in my stock-pot sitting on a dining chair in my bedroom.
No matter my many eccentricities and faults, one always has friends if one makes decent pies.
I think I drive my family half-mad with stories about the things I got up to in Ireland. Never in my mind did I imagine such a place would exist. It was like my ultimate fairy-tale land, with plenty of cows, fresh meat and dairy, green grass, bubbling brooks and quiet forests, a place like that which I had only read about in stories.
You must understand, from the moment I could understand stories my grandmother would read to me from Little House in the Big Woods and Laura Ingall's other books. I spent many happy weekends at my grandmother's bungalow, pretending her tropical flower and herb garden was a farm or a frontier to be tamed. Unlike other girls my age in the 1990s, I did not dream about dressing up like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan like other children my age. I dreamed about gingham dresses and pink ribbons in my braids, sunbonnets and button-up shoes. I dreamed about churning cream into butter and making soap over an open fire.
Well, at least the soap portion of that is something I do do. I have a little enterprise making soa, and today was unusual int hat I attempted two new recipes, the results of which will be seen tomorrow. One was a cold-process loaf of carrot puree soap, and the other an attempt at making glycerin "melt and pour".
This is was I did (for record's sake):
The recipe has no superfat and fragrances. There were 500 grams of oil, 35% coconut, 15% castor, 25 palm and the rest rice bran oil. I diluted it with 250 grams of glycerin and 250 grams of sugar water, made with 100 grams of sugar and 150 grams of water.
Good night.
Today, I made a loaf of bread. It is a simple, satisfying pleasure. I don't do be because I have to, I do it because I love it. I have made this same recipe for country seed and spelt bread into possibly a hundred loaves my now. It is a recipe that is incredibly simple. My mother never believed how easy it was until I moved to Ireland for a year and she started making it herself.
"Wow, it's so easy and it can't go wrong," she told me.
Indeed.
Even when living overseas, I could not stop myself from making bread. I had a mixing bowl, a few measuring cups and spoons and had to get on it with just like the pioneers did. Not that Brennan's bread is no good, it indeed was very good. It's just a part of me, that I want to get my fingers dirty and make bread.
Baking in Ireland was an entirely different experience. Stripped of my luxurious home kitchen, stand mixers, and every tools I could possibly want, I relished the challenge of "making do", and on a budget at that. Pound cakes were painstakingly beaten by hand, bread was kneaded and left to rise overnight by my window and the occasionally-used radiator.
I never had much success with pies in Malaysia. They seemed so difficult and laborious. Pie doughs never, ever behaved. Never rolled out properly. And the amount of butter used (butter is a costly luxury in Malaysia) - why, my thrifty soul recoiled. After all, one could make three trays of scones with the amount of butter it took a make a pie. But butter, good, Irish butter (from Tesco notwithstanding) was plentiful and affordable. Larger, tart and succulent Bramley apples were often on sale for only fifty cents a kilo. No one will convince me that Granny Smith is the superior apple. Bramley is the green apple for pies.The first, real Blueberry pie I ever made was one I made myself, in Ireland, with half-price blueberries from Aldi. Ah, what a treat. What a sublime privilege, indeed, for blueberries in Malaysia are almost like forbidden fruit. The photograph above is of my windowsill where the pies and breads would sit overnight. Electricity was half-price during the wee morning hours, and that was when I would bake. Bread took half a day to rise, and it often rose in my stock-pot sitting on a dining chair in my bedroom.
No matter my many eccentricities and faults, one always has friends if one makes decent pies.
I think I drive my family half-mad with stories about the things I got up to in Ireland. Never in my mind did I imagine such a place would exist. It was like my ultimate fairy-tale land, with plenty of cows, fresh meat and dairy, green grass, bubbling brooks and quiet forests, a place like that which I had only read about in stories.
You must understand, from the moment I could understand stories my grandmother would read to me from Little House in the Big Woods and Laura Ingall's other books. I spent many happy weekends at my grandmother's bungalow, pretending her tropical flower and herb garden was a farm or a frontier to be tamed. Unlike other girls my age in the 1990s, I did not dream about dressing up like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan like other children my age. I dreamed about gingham dresses and pink ribbons in my braids, sunbonnets and button-up shoes. I dreamed about churning cream into butter and making soap over an open fire.
Well, at least the soap portion of that is something I do do. I have a little enterprise making soa, and today was unusual int hat I attempted two new recipes, the results of which will be seen tomorrow. One was a cold-process loaf of carrot puree soap, and the other an attempt at making glycerin "melt and pour".
This is was I did (for record's sake):
The recipe has no superfat and fragrances. There were 500 grams of oil, 35% coconut, 15% castor, 25 palm and the rest rice bran oil. I diluted it with 250 grams of glycerin and 250 grams of sugar water, made with 100 grams of sugar and 150 grams of water.
Good night.
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