65°C

I always love the smell of yeast and flour on my fingers after kneading.

Often times when I eat bread, I wonder how they made it soft, or how like the ones you buy from neighbourhood bakeries where you can see strands of bread straddling across as you peel it apart. Now I finally know.

It's called the 65°C 汤种. Apparently it was a Chinese method of cooking flour with hot water and was used in making dumpling skins and noodles since ancient times and had its use extrapolated to bread-baking in recent times. The mixture is cooked to 65°C, at which point gluten in the flour absorbs the water and is leavened. Adding this as part of the ingredients results in a softer and more moist loaf. The Japanese seems to have a somewhat similar method, but I have yet to find out how.

Indeed, my previous tries at bread making were less than stellar and the bread would turn out to be a little too dry.

See the fluffy, gluten-y texture...although I think it can be better. Actually used cream and full-cream milk to bake it but the milk taste wasn't there.

A cheddar cheese version. Somehow the texture of this was even softer.