How dumb could I be? How dumb could I be? It was staring me in the face and I did not notice it. If you had been reading my previous articles on how to make plain bread rise more you would know that somewhere along the line my brain got disengaged. I’m still smarting from my stupidity.
I finally figured it out and succeeded in making plain bread within two hours from the time I began to weigh the flour until taking the baked plain bread out of the oven. Sure the plain bread can do with a little bit of improvement but it is nice to eat though. Oh, that picture you see on the left was taken while my brain was still partially disengaged – I had eaten some of the plain bread before I remembered that I wanted to photograph it.
In my last experiment I had tried to make bread rise quickly without any chemicals. I went back to basics and discovered that by increasing the yeast, sugar and gluten it was possible to make bread rise more quickly and at the same time create a larger loaf of bread.
This time around I discovered that it is possible to make bread rise during the proofing stage within half an hour. Most standard bread recipes, that contain no chemicals accelerators or modifiers or conditioners, require a total fermentation and proofing period of 4 to 5 hours. Today with the Batter and Dough, I have dropped this figure to 0.5 to 1 hour.
Make bread rise in one hour instead of four hours. Sorry for the long silence as I have been working on how to make bread rise more and quickly ever since I made the garlic bread. It really bugged me to see how much the garlic bread rose within the four hours. I know that certain additives can be used to make bread rise a lot but to find a bread flour that didn’t require additives and that would rise a lot knocked me off my feet. I know of the standard method of letting the dough rise in the oven with the pilot light on. The warmth of the pilot light brings up the temperature to point that is conducive for the growth of yeast. Those methods were not good enough for me. So I went back to the drawing board and re-looked at the whole process. 5 to 6 experiments later I had solved most of the issues relating to making bread rise more and quickly.
Does the name of our Lord God, YHWH, have a hidden meaning? I believe YHWH has a hidden meaning. This is really a beautiful name of our Lord God, once you understand the hidden meaning of YHWH. I have wondered about the origins of a name and mysteries behind the meaning of a name, and found out that many names have hidden meanings.
In the last experiment on liposomal vitamin c I had mentioned that I would give up trying more experiments on liposomal vitamin c. But it bugged me too much that this thing called lecithin was laughing in my face … in my face. You would think that I could not be defeated my a mere blob of lecithin but I was. There it was, grinning like a Cheshire cat totally oblivious to my utter frustration at its stubbornness to behave the way I wanted it to behave.
One thing I learned during my rubber industry days was that materials unlike electronic circuits, never behave the way you want them too. With electronic circuits you can make them behave the way you want them too. Unfortunately, materials are not the same. You have to follow the behaviour of materials and not the materials follow your requirements. This was a culture shock when I moved from electronic engineering to rubber technology. Having remembered this, I took out some old stock of raw materials and decided to checkout the behaviour of lecithin.
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Dear Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
This is a new simple and easy method of making garlic bread using steamed garlic cloves that everyone can do at home. It is easy to make garlic bread with the Batter and Dough method. I do hope this Batter and Dough method does help everyone to make bread at home.
Why add garlic cloves into bread? Garlic has loads of nutritional benefits. Raw garlic will kill of many viruses, bacteria and fungi hence it has to be cooked before mixing into the dough and yeast.
This is a new simple and easy method that everyone can use at home. It is easy to make bread with this Batter and Dough method that I had invented. I do hope this Batter and Dough method does help everyone at home.
If you had read my previous article on the Batter and Dough method to make bread, you would know that the beauty of this method is that you do not need to knead the dough to make excellent bread. The bread turns out moist and tender. In fact I had kept the bread for 5 days – eating it slowly, and it was still good. This means that it is possible to make bread without chemicals and without kneading.
I have been carrying out more experiments to see where are the limits to this Batter and Dough method and how to improve this process of making bread. If you have never made homemade bread before I would suggest that you begin with this Batter and Dough method as it is very easy to get good results.
Live band at Mark’s Place Pub and Bistro in Kelana Jaya, Malaysia
Live band at Mark’s Place
I never thought that a live band in Malaysia could be really good until a friend of mine took me to Mark’s Place, at Plaza Kelana Jaya, in Kelana Jaya, PJ. I didn’t come there for the live band and it was by accident we were there at the right time and day or should I say evening.
We had been looking at properties, as real estate agents, and after a long day decide to pass the time at Mark’s Place which is a pub and bistro. My friend, who lives in Ampang, brought me here and, as usual, I did not know this pub existed right next to my mom’s house.
The difficulty of making bread with self raising flour is that self raising flour has very low protein content. Technically or even legally, bread made from self raising flour would not be considered bread due to the low protein content. I tried to succeed at making bread from self-raising flour because I wanted to show how my new method of making bread, The Batter and Dough Method, works.
I could make beautiful bread by kneading the dough for about 45 minutes and the breads, plain simple bread or wholemeal bread turned out beautiful and tasty. Each time I made bread I wondered “Why, Why Why Oh Dear God do I have to struggle so much for such a beautiful thing?”. From that day I used to ask myself ‘Why?’, ‘Why?’, ‘Why?’ and then one day it dawned on me that I was asking the wrong question.
You see, I didn’t want to struggle so much and I wanted an easier way to make simple bread. There were two problems I was facing. The first was why was it not possible to make simple bread from self-raising (or self-rising) flour and the other bigger problem was that why I had to do so much kneading to make tasty and beautiful bread.
Later on, I realised that I was asking the wrong question. I should not be asking “Why” but “How”. That changed my perspective. I had been experimenting making bread for about one and a half years and then one morning last month I woke up in bed and remembered helping my mother make pancakes when I was a kid. I had this vision of myself, transported back in time, as a young kid, leaning against the table top and stirring the pancake batter.
I never thought in my wildest dreams I would meet an English Buddhist monk, of all places, here in Malaysia. English? Yes, really, really English. I have meet many Buddhist monks over the years and many are short or at least shorter than me. I would be considered almost tall for an Asian so I was not expecting to meet someone taller. When I met Amaranatho I was really surprised to meet someone much taller then me.
He was tall, lean and jovial. In his email, he had mentioned that he was on a tight schedule and could spare me half an hour to meet me. You see, after years of living like a recluse in front of a computer, I was going through a phase in my life where I liked to meet as many of my blog readers as possible. I have met quite a few of them and mostly at the teh tarik stall or a mamak restaurant.
Basically, I had itching on both my wrists when I consumed liposomal vitamin c. Even though the itching was mild it was irritating and very distracting. Andrew had suggested that if you are sensitive to lecithin from soy beans you could try lecithin from sunflowers. I could not get sunflower lecithin and found an alternative solution that could help many people. I do hope this article does help many people.
Once I knew that the proteins were the cause of the allergic reaction I knew that there was one more experiment that I could try to knock off the allergy.
Cheesecake with strawberry and durian is simply gorgeous
strawberry and durian cheesecake
How to make durian cheesecake – an introduction
I am really, really upset and disappointed. In my last article, 6th September 2012, on durian cheesecake I had explained why the Raja Musang (Musang King) variety was simply delicious. Within a week of that article being published all Raja Musang durians have disappeared from the shelves. I believe that the Raja Musang durian variety is now exported to China, Australia and Singapore and there is none left in Malaysia for us to eat or just that the durian season is over – so much for an exciting conspiracy theory.
The next best durian variety for us poor folks in Malaysia is the XO variety (I believe named after the drink). Do take care when eating durians as the folklore is that it is dangerous when consumed with alcohol or when under treatment with antibiotics as many people have died when mixing durians with alcohol or antibiotics. Of course, if you know me well enough, you will know I have tried all the above combinations and today I can safely tell you that I am not a ghost writer … or am I?
How dumb could I be? How dumb could I be? It was staring me in the face and I did not notice it. If you had been reading my previous articles on how to make plain bread rise more you would know that somewhere along the line my brain got disengaged. I’m still smarting from my stupidity.
In my last experiment I had tried to 
Make bread rise in one hour instead of four hours. Sorry for the long silence as I have been working on 
Does the name of our Lord God, YHWH, have a hidden meaning? I believe YHWH has a hidden meaning. This is really a beautiful name of our Lord God, once you understand the hidden meaning of YHWH. I have wondered about the origins of a name and mysteries behind the meaning of a name, and found out that many names have hidden meanings.
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
This is a new simple and easy method of making garlic bread using steamed garlic cloves that everyone can do at home. It is 
I had being carrying out many experiments on ways to make liposomal vitamin c and when one of my readers,
This is a new simple and easy method that everyone can use at home. It is easy to make bread with this Batter and Dough method that I had invented. I do hope this Batter and Dough method does help everyone at home.
Live band at Mark’s Place
Making homemade bread from self raising flour or self rising flour is quite tricky and many bakers will tell you it is impossible. After about one and a half years of experimenting making bread I finally figured it out. In my last article I showed a new technique, that I had developed, 
I have carried out many experiments on ways to make liposomal vitamin c and my findings are as show below. I had an 
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