Category / bread

by colleen xie

Honey Challah

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If you ask me at any given moment, would I rather live in the past or in the present, I would unfailingly choose the past. My nostalgia can be overwhelmingly hopeless at times… as if I were clutching onto fragile branches of the past, while the currents of now and today are grasping at me, relentlessly pulling me deeper into turbulent water.

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With two unexpected events that occured within the past two months– my grandma’s passing, and my brother’s wedding reception date set– I felt like I’ve been ripped away from what I’ve always known and thrown into the deep. While one is a cause for mourning and the other celebration…neither of those events did I ever expect to happen now. Continue reading →

by colleen xie

Brioche with maybe-genius Marzipan

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Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

(not quite “Let them eat cake”. More like “Let them eat really rich buttery yeasted bread”)

Okay Marie Antoinette, if you insist.

When I was in Paris, I ate my weight in brioche. It’s astounding how something packed with butter and eggs can taste like it is made out of air. Proof: my dad commented offhandedly after tasting this brioche how airy it was, and that I must’ve not used a lot of butter. (I chortled. Chortled.)

Ethereally light, cloud-like, melt-in-your mouth– to me, that’s the sign of a superb brioche. Continue reading →

by colleen xie

Steam-baked Black Sesame Milk Rolls

I’m a total carbivore. When my family goes out for dim sum, our must order items are the usual ones– har gow, sew mai, beef cheung fun, egg tarts. We’ve had our fair share of super soft, melt-in-your mouth baked (not steamed) BBQ buns. Soft enough for me to examine its texture and wonder how it was achieved. These rolls were made in pursuit of that melt-in-your mouth quality.
I started off with the hokkaido milk recipe buns, but made a few notable changes to both the ingredients and method. And guys. The results were brilliant.

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by colleen xie

Salted Chocolate Marzipan Babka

I hope everyone’s been having a lovely, wonderful, restful holiday season!

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After exams were over, my main preoccupations were working/volunteering, catching up with old friends, baking, and of course, revamping my blog. Besides updating posts that I had drafted since summer (and I’m still not finished), I switched platforms, from blogger to wordpress. It’s been a relatively smooth switch, but I didn’t know wordpress.com didn’t let you change the coding of a theme. Which is unnerving, but at least I can manually change the font of each post by the text editor option.

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And in other, more exciting news… I bought my first DSLR (Canon t5i) on Black Friday. I’m sort of technologically challenged/jinxed. Given my history of dropping/spilling things on my laptop, breaking things accidentally, and just being a klutz in general, I honestly was too afraid to even open the box until after exam season, when I would have more time to figure it out (ie. struggle with the instruction manual). Putting in the lens was an ordeal in itself, really.

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by colleen xie

Chai Black Sesame Pulla

 I’m bringing you my love of all things chai, black sesame & carbs to present to you…chai black sesame pulla! What is pulla? I’ve never heard of it either, until I stumbled across Pinch of Yum’s stunning loaf. According to Wiki it’s a mildly-sweet Finnish sweet bread, flavored with crushed cardamom seeds and sometimes raisins or sliced almonds. This bread neither has cardamom nor raisins nor almonds so I don’t know if this qualifies as pulla anymore, but let me tell you, this is one of my favourite yeast doughs to work with, bake, and inhale.

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