Paul Hollywood's bloomer

The bake-it-yourself bread series. A bloomer. The European kind.

Probably the most classic, most beginner-friendly one out there — Paul teaches you to bake bread, from the BBC Recipe channel.

Paul Hollywood’s bloomer http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/paul_hollywoods_bloomer_84636

There are already plenty of walkthroughs for this thing online, including a Chinese translation over on Xiachufang:

https://www.xiachufang.com/dish/124428783/

The first knead felt weird, but for proofing I’d personally recommend using your oven’s proof setting — saves you time.

The BBC recipe is convenient, you can print yourself a copy for reference.

Honestly the whole process went smoothly, but when it came out of the oven it looked like it had overbaked. My oven runs hot.

That said, it actually tasted fine. There’s salt in it, so the bread is savory.

Smelled great, crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. According to Paul’s secret trick, you pour a bit of water into a tray at the bottom when it goes in, which makes the bread softer. I did it, and yeah, it works.

The bread tastes okay, I guess, but the texture felt weirdly familiar and I couldn’t figure out why.

My dad took one bite and said, “Nice shaobing you baked there, just looks a bit weird.”

And that’s when I finally understood why the taste and texture were so familiar…

The most important thing, though: I didn’t use bread flour this time. I used stone-ground flour my family sent from back home, which is probably also why it looks like shaobing.