Baking Challenges

Eight-Stranded, Plaited Loaf!

 

Recently I've had some time off from work and it's given me a chance to bake some different things. I've never tried bread before, so I thought I would attempt the famous Paul Hollywood, Great British Bake Off, Eight-Stranded, Plaited Loaf!

I'm not going to lie, this was extremely difficult to make! The actual bread wasn't that difficult to make, kneading the dough was extremely fun!

The plait is pretty complicated and the dough was pretty sticky, so every time I went wrong I had to start right from the beginning as the strands were impossible to untangle!

In the end, it wasn't too bad for a first attempt! Next time I might try some seeded bread rolls.

Chocolate Macarons

 

I attempted to make Macarons twice, the above is my second, much better attempt! I used a really basic recipe from BBC Good Food, unfortunately it left a lot of the finer details out! It felt a little bit like the Great British Bake Off technical challenge to be honest! 

So these turned out a lot better because I blitzed the dry mixture in a food processor to make it finer (A mixture of plain flour, ground almonds, coco powder and sugar). Without doing this, you get a really lumpy texture to the macaron! 

I also left them to 'dry out' before putting them in the oven, this let them form a crust on top (they should be dry to the touch) and this stops them from cracking in the oven.

Finally, I baked them on a really low temperature (140 degrees C) for a longer time, so that they dried out slowly (as the wet part of the mixture is egg white) and didn't burn!

I filled these with chocolate ganche, but the flavour combinations for these little treats are endless!

Thanks for reading!