My experiments in Kitchen

I discovered baking only last year after I bought an L.G Solar dome Oven.Since then I search online for recipes. Some of them have turned out be good, some not so good, some utter failure. I discovered Suma's blog very recently.And yesterday I was feeling little low, and wanted to bake something to cheer myself up. I found "Garlic Knots" from her blog very interesting.But I was little hesitant about the outcome, but eventually it came out pretty well, and we had it with tomato soup in the evening just as they serve in 5 Star hotel.

I tweaked her recipe, since I was using Kwality Active dry yeast.

Ingredients
For the dough:
3 cups Plain Maida
1 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. yeast
1¼ tsp. salt
2 tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup milk, lukewarm
1/2 cup of lukewarm water
For Glaze:
2 tbs butter
1 tsp Oregano
2 cloves of garlic minced.

For Proofing of Yeast:
25ml of warm water
2 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
Warm the water for 15 seconds in Microwave oven, add salt and Yeast. Wait for 10 minutes, the yeast froths up.

Preparing the dough:

Add the flour, milk, yeast and water mixture first in a bowl. Add water as and when required.I used only 1/4 cup of water to get a sticky dough.Knead the dough for 12 minutes do not add any flour, eventually the stickiness of the dough will disappear.Smear oil to a clean bowl and place the dough and cover it with a cloth.Preheat your oven @ 200 degrees for 2 minutes. Keep the dough in the oven.This step is mainly to help the dough raise in this Bangalore weather.

After around 2 hours, the dough doubles up, knead it and release the air.divide the dough into 10 tennis ball sized parts.Overturn a clean steel plate and roll the dough into a cylinder, as we do "Kodubale" and tie the dough into a Knot.For a step by step Instruction with Picture please see Suma's blog here .Let it raise for another hour. Line the baking tray with ghee and place the puffed knots. Coat the buns with butter and oregano mixture.Preheat your oven to 190 degrees and bake them for 16 mins or until slightly brown.

Tips:
1.Proof the dry yeast, with slightly warm water.
2.While mixing the dough add water as and when required to get a sticky dough.
3.Add oregano, garlic to the butter which is @ room temperature to glaze the buns.

Thanks Suma, this will be my entry to your Bakeomania.

Baby food -Ragi Cherry
My kulla is seven months old, and  I made Ragi Cherry @ home. Now I really don't know why its called Cherry. This particular Baby food recipe is passed on to me from my grand mom . In the shop a 475 g Cerelac Ragi costs close to 190 Rs. But @ home, we can prepare it at a fraction of cost.


Ingredients:

1. Ragi -1kg
2. Wheat -100gms
3. Green Gram-100gms
4. Almond-50gms
5. Sabudana-50gms

Method

1. Soak wheat, ragi, green gram in a large vessel overnight
2. Wash 2 to 3 times all the ingredients until you are  sure that its clean.
3. Transfer them to a large sieve to remove excess water after washing.
4. Tie ragi, wheat, green gram in a thin cotton cloth. eg:dupatta
5. The sprouts starts to appear after about a day.
6. Make sure to open the cloth and see it at least once a day, so that no  fungus develops.
7. Keep it for another day so that you see  a few centimeter long sprouts.
8. Now dry the sprouted ingredients in shade, that is  inside the room for a day or until you are sure that there is no wetness.
9. Now roast, almonds, and sabudana .
10. Grind everything into a fine powder .
12. At the end of the exercise you should be getting almost white fine powder. 

Sprouted Ragi

Sprouted Wheat and green gram

Ragi Cherry

Method to feed the baby

1. Mix one teaspoon of ragi Cherry into 200 ml of cold water stir so that there are no lumps.
2. Add 1/4 spoon of ghee
3. Heat the water until it  boils and the ragi is cooked.

Note: Initially for first  few days feed the baby just one spoon of ragi serry only once a day. Only after you are sure that the baby has no allergy you can increase the quantity.Make the Ragi Cherry in semi liquid consistency.