Thermomix Day 1

It arrived today.  Krissy brought it over at 1.30 and plugged it in, showed me how it worked. She also brought some veggies with which to make the veggie stock paste. Carrots, celery, parsley, onion and more went in, along with salt.  Blitz blitz, cook cook, and I have a jar full of delicious-looking stock paste.

Michael came home and so this was my opportunity to try out something for us. Watermelon chunks, pineapple chunks, a little chunk of ginger, and a tray of ice cubes. (Maybe I am going to wish I had a fridge that makes a lot of ice.). All in together, blitz blitz for a minute and a half, and it was delicious. Yum yum!  

Then time to try out bread. This was more problematic. I happened to have whole wheat grains. I like to soak these and cook them in the slow cooker as porridge for breakfast. It reminds me of growing up when we had 44 gallon drums full of wheat to feed the chickens - Dad loved his chooks!  Mum used to soak the wheat and cook it overnight on the slow-combustion stove.   We used to love running our hands through the dry grains. So there you have my life story as explanation of why I have whole wheat grains in the cupboard. 

They all went in, and were milled into flour, and set aside. So far so good, I am impressed with the milling.   Next went in a sachet of dry yeast and some water. Stir and heat to 37 degrees. No trouble. Then weigh the extra flour - 400-450 grams of bread flour. I had some, but not that much. I added some ordinary white flour - still not enough by weight, so in went a little rice flour. Then the milled whole wheat. All on top of the water and yeast. It looked alarmingly full. Did I weigh correctly? It didn't look right at all, but I got the lid on, and blitzed for 6 seconds on 6, then kneaded for two minutes.  I did add the olive oil,  but forgot the salt.  I had to really push it all down and I mixed and kneaded again as it really wasn't mixed enough, it didn't look like bread dough at all yet.  I felt it was too full to mix properly,  so  I tipped it into my trusty Kitchen Aid with the dough hook and let it knead for a while longer, until it did look like bread dough. 

Covered it and let it rise. Punched it down again with the dough hook (and added some belated salt) on the Kitchen Aid, and divided it into two tins. It was way too much for one loaf. I suspect I did something wrong in the weighing, but pressed on regardless. Let it rise again, then baked it. 

Here are the results.  Two loaves of crusty bread, delicious.  They have risen unevenly as you can see, and are maybe a little doughy, but not bad at all.  I shall try other recipes. I shall probably do the same thing tipping it into the Kitchen Aid for longer kneading. I shall weigh and weigh again, perhaps with my own scales as well as the Thermomix scales. I shall eat the bread!