mayurisjikoni

Today is Pancake Day Theme : Pancakes         Imagine a whole day dedicated to pancakes. Most people love pancakes. When I say pancakes there's such a huge variety out there that its unbelievable. Right from fermented batter to quick batters. I could eat pancakes everyday, but have to control myself because of all the butter and honey or maple syrup. Pancakes without butter taste dry. However, what I've made for this theme, hoppers can be eaten without any guilt as they are gluten free and hardly have any sugar in it.    For Christians Shrove Tuesday marks the last day before Lent. Lent is the 40 day period of fasting before Easter. Usually ingredients like sugar, fat, flour and eggs had to be used up before the fasting period began. So the most obvious way to use them up was to make pancakes.Nowadays Pancake Day is enjoyed by all whether Christian or not. It gives one an excuse to indulge in pancakes.     Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm ...

Gingerbread and Oatmeal Bread#BreadBakers Theme: Whole Grained Holiday Breads    Whether people would like to admit it or not, December brings about an air of festivities for all. The celebrations begin with ThanksGiving and will end with New Year celebrations. Shops are decorated, Christmas sales are on, friends and relatives share decorated streets, trees, homes photos. One cannot help but get drawn to this seasonal celebration. I consider myself very lucky that I get to enjoy Diwali, Eid and Christmas. As a Hindu living in a predominantly Christian Country and a strong Muslim part of Kenya, I get drawn into celebrating all three festivals.    When Kalyani of Sizzling Tastebuds suggested Whole Grained Holiday Breads, I tried looking for recipes where I could use whole grains. There are many recipes out there using spelt and rye flour. I don't get either in Kenya or India. Kalyani suggested that we try and use whole grain as much as possible. I was nearly going to s...

Cheese Stuffed Garlic Pull Apart Bread#BreadBakers Theme: Pull Apart Breads   Pull Apart Bread has been on my 'to do' list for a long time. I've done mini ones in a muffin pan, but wanted to bake one in a bundt pan. However, the bundt pan part didn't really work out but the pull apart bread got baked.    My daughter keeps on insisting that she's not going to eat much carbs, so initially I tried baking half the recipe to give a small loaf. First all, its the first time I'm halving a basic bread recipe so forgot that I should add less salt. The small miserable looking loaf didn't come out too well and it was salty. However, my daughter liked the idea of tiny pieces of bread stuffed with cheese so she insisted that I bake one for her to take to work. That was a relief as I now could bake the normal 3-3½ cup flour bread. I used a small cake tin and the shape came out much better, the rise was good and yes it wasn't salty.   Pull Apart Breads is the Novembe...

Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough Bread#BreadBakers Breads with Preferments    When Karen of Karen’s Kitchen Stories  announced breads with levain, I was excited. Here was a theme that was going to push me to make my own sourdough starter. We were allowed to use other starters like biga, poolish, soakers, tangzhong etc. I left those options if only I failed with the sourdough.    Last year my brother in law from Nairobi had given me a bit of the starter from his batch. I brought it back to Mombasa and fed it till it was nice and bubbly. I tried making a sourdough bread and the mass of dough was just too unmanageable for me. The bread failed in a big (major!) way. The sourdough went into the fridge and stayed there for a few days. Took it out and used it a bit for pancakes.    After that it was forgotten! When I came back from India, of course I had to throw it away. A recent trip to Montreal and enjoying all the variety of sourdough breads was convincing enoug...

Let's break bread internationally    What is bread? Bread is basically flour and water mixed together and then either baked, roasted or fried. Different parts of the world use different flours and different ingredients are added to make it soft, with crumbs, with flavor and to give it a required texture. Most part of the world considers some form of bread as their staple diet except for East Asia where the stable is rice and some African countries where the staple is cornmeal cooked into a porridge like consistency. We have the more famous brioche, baguettes, rye breads,naans, parathas to less heard of breads like dorayaki, kaya,lahoh. The list of different breads all over the world is endless.    For the month of September, our host Wendy who blogs at A Day in the Life on the Farm suggested we make International Breads, preferably from another country and not your own. Wendy thanks for the exciting theme. It was really diffic...