basicsofbaking-blog

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¡¡ ~Sopaipilla Chilena~ !!

In Chile we eat something called Sopaipilla’s very often. Apparently we’ve been eating them since at least the 1720s! They’re street foods, and typically made at home. It can be made to be eaten sweet (like a pastry!), named Sopaipilla pasada with chancaca sauce, which is hot and syrupy, or salty, with famous pebre chileno. 

Sopaipilla is a fried bread composed of flour, baking powder, aaaannnnddddd zapallo - which is the spanish word for pumpkin. 

It’s really important for someone making sopaipilla to get the right kind of zapallo, it is the main ingredient and what will ultimately give it flavor and differentiate it from just regular bread. 

When I say zapallo (pumpkin) I mean either this:

OR this:

It is also very important to get the zapallo as deep yellow as possible, meaning as mature as possible. This means the squash is full of tasty, delicious flavor. 

Typically I’d include a recipe (because, well, uh, I’m not nearly a good enough baker), however, my grandmother has been making sopaipilla in front of us for a long time and the recipe I used today was pretty much trash, so I’m going to include it but with some serious edits. The only thing with my grandmothers sopaipilla recipe is that it’s not specific - my grandma wings every meal, meaning she measures by eye and touch.

Ingredients

1 cup zapallo 

2 cups flour (have 4-5 cups ready to add more)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1-1 1/2 teaspoon fine salt (depending on how much salt you like in your food)

3 tablespoons vegetable shortening, margarine or butter, melted (we never used this but you can)

Canola or vegetable oil (if all you have is olive oil, that is fine as well)

Makes about 20-30

Instructions

Cut the zapallo into pieces, like the size of the first picture

*Note: you can either attempt to cut the skin during this moment, or take the skin off after you boil it. The challenges with the former is that the zapallo is tough, and with the latter is that it is, of course, boiling hot. I’d recommend trying to find zapallo where the skin is already cut off*

Place the zapallo inside a saucepan full of water and let it sit on the stove until it begins to boil. Wait until you can pierce through the sapallo easily with a knife or fork. 

Once ready, take zapallo out (but keep the water!) and mush it together until it is puree

In a large bowl mix the flour, butter, salt and baking powder together. Then begin to add the zapallo mixture.

Mix together until it becomes doughy. 

My grandmother used to add a bit of the hot water that the sapallo boiled in into the mix. I think she did this because she used a lot more flour then the recipe above calls for. 

I added a touch of water because the mixture was dry, but then it became very sticky and I had to add a lot of flour to try to balance it out. 

*I’d honestly say that if you recognize how dough is suppose to feel, wing the process. Sopaipilla’s are not difficult, and they’re delicious (although you know when you’re eating an especially good sopaipilla), just go for it until you feel the dough be strong enough and wet but not sticky.

Once ready, cut the dough into small pieces, flatten with a roller into circles and poke with a fork three times across the surface. This is so that when they begin to fry the oil has a release in the center and doesn’t cause a bubble to burst

On a fry pan, put enough oil to create a pool and turn the heat on medium low. 

It is important that you don’t put the heat too high otherwise the oil and the sopaipilla will burn.

When the oil is hot enough, place a few sopaipilla’s in and make sure you watch them. Once the bottom part is fully cooked (you’ll know when the skin is a golden/dark golden color)

Obv. mine are not perfectly round, but it don’t matter, they taste delish.

[basicsofbaking-blog]

This book just arrived in the mail. SUPPPEEERRR EXCITED to read it and work through each recipe 

[basicsofbaking-blog]

Hawaiian Sweet Rolls - 4 out of 5 Stars

I know I committed to doing these every Monday, however this week was an exception (mostly due to the fact that I did not come up with the idea of doing a bread weekly until Monday at 2 in the morning). 

So this weeks bread is the Hawaiian Sweet Rolls!!

I think I’ll lay out the recipe first, with my own edits, put the pictures and then add my comments below. 

Recipe - from Red Star Yeast

For the dough

5 to 6 cups bread flour

2 packages (4½ tsp, ½oz, 14g) RED STAR Platinum Superior Baking Yeast (I used the Red Star Active Dry Yeast because I was not about to buy more ingredients then absolutely necessary - see below for comments)

½ cup warm water (110-115°F)

Pinch of sugar (to activate yeast)

⅔ cup pineapple juice

½ cup coconut milk (which is a little pulpy, don’t be alarmed, make sure to shake well before using!)

½ cup melted butter

¼ cup honey (I would add a bit more honey)

3 eggs

1 Tbsp salt

For the egg wash

1 egg

1 Tbsp water

Instructions

In a small mixing bowl combine warm water, yeast and a pinch of sugar. Allow to sit at room temperature until the mixture is foamy.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, combine, yeast mixture with pineapple juice, coconut milk, melted butter, honey, eggs and salt. Mix on low until combined.

Slowly mix in flour ½ cup at a time until the dough pulls away from the sides and is only slightly sticky. You may not need to use the full 6 cups.

Turn mixer to medium/low speed and “knead” until the dough is elastic, about 6 minutes.

Turn dough out into a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm spot to rise.

Allow dough to double in size.

Punch dough down, and divide into 12-18 even balls. Shape into rolls and place in greased baking pans. (Two 9-inch round pans or one large cookie sheet work well)

Set rolls aside to rise a second time, until they have doubled in size.

Meanwhile preheat oven to 350°F.

Once rolls have doubled in size, brush with an egg wash (beat 1 egg with 1 tablespoon water) and bake until golden on the tops. Approximately 25-30 minutes.

Brush with melted butter and serve 

Recipe created by Bakeaholic Mama.

Pictures

Process of Mixing Yeast, water and sugar

Let the dough rise for about 1 and 40 minutes - but what is more important than time is the size, so make sure it doubles

Before going into the oven

After

So Thoughts

First, I have to say - this is NOT a basic recipe that you can do while concentrating on other things, especially if you do not have much experience with baking breads. The process of putting in all the ingredients before the flour was a new one, because typically most instructions tell me to mix the liquids into the flour. 

Unfortunately, I was on the phone talking shit while mixing the ingredients, so a few things went wrong:

1. I did not count the cups of flours I actually put in -.-’’ I’m thinking I put 5, but it just as easily could have been 6, or 4. When mixing the flour in, at the beginning it began to clump in the mixture, which was a little annoying because it worried me that the bread was going to not mix well. Just keep adding flour and eventually it’ll mix well. 

One problem with the flour was that you’re suppose to add them by 1/2′s, however, even after 5 (or 6 or maybe 4, but I doubt it?) cups of flour, the dough was very sticky and hard to remove from my hands. As I added more flour it became increasingly hard to mix it with the already formed dough, which was very sticky and moist, but not a liquid consistency that allowed for easy mixing. I would say don’t be afraid to add all 6 cups and when the dough seems less sticky, take it out of the bowl and mix it on the counter with a bit of flour in the bottom. 

-- Typically you want to not add more flour then is needed because it’ll dry the bread out, but it was seriously too sticky. 

2. I actually forgot the melted butter... 

3. When putting it into the bowl to proof, which means rest and let rise, I covered it in waaaayyyy too much olive oil, be careful when you do this. 

4. I was too lazy to make the Egg Wash - I can tell you they came out fine enough without them, but they might have looked better with a top shine and crisp outside. 

Even though the recipe says it takes about 2 hours, it took me about 3, and it made 16 rolls. It could have made more if I had made them smaller and let them rise further.

My only criticism for this recipe is that they are not sweet at all. I added the right amount of honey, coconut milk and pineapple juice (which was really sweet in it of itself) but the rolls have a bland taste to them :/ 

Overall 

I’d give these rolls 4 stars out of 5! I know I didn’t exactly follow the directions properly, but the biggest disappointment was the lack of sweetness. Next time I’ll try putting a tiny bit more honey. The rolls are really versatile, you can make sandwiches, toast, or just have them with butter or jam. Not adding the butter shows though, the bread is a bit dry.