Bread Making and Espresso Brewing
This past summer, I have been getting into making bread and espressos. Which has both happened somewhat randomly. These two things has become something I do on a daily and weekly basis, so I thought I'd do a fun post to share my journey and progress.
On Making Espresso
I was contemplating on getting into brewing beer and wine this summer to go with my BBQ. I was getting into the whole defining my craft kinda thing, and was interested in making food and drinks.
My friend CS was moving and gave me her espresso machine after I asked her about it. She said she wasn't getting much use out of it and gave it to me. Cool! Right away I got excited because I always did like coffee, and so did the wife too. I thought to myself, making a coffee was something I regularly did anyways, so why not try espressos? With an espresso machine and a steaming wand, you can make things like Americanos, Latte, Cappuccino and so on. It's more practical than brewing/drinking beer and wine all day anyways.
I went home with the machine that night and started researching how to make a cup of coffee. Oh man, there were so much to learn and everyone had an own opinions.
Delonghi ECP3120 - My first espresso machine
I must caution you. If you think coffee and espressos is a cheap and straightforward hobby. Think again. It can be a straight forward thing, but many people get very serious about this stuff.
Breadmaking
Now that making coffee and espressos has somewhat started, I found another challenge.
While scrolling on my phone one day, I saw a content creator claiming bread making was easy. It caught my attention because I always thought it was an impossible thing after a disastrous attempt in trying to make cookies in university (my housemate said they tasted like mud, and it did).
In the video I watched, there were only 4 ingredients in baking a white bread. Flour, yeast, salt and water. The wife had bought a big bag of flour the week prior so the stars aligned for my experiment. We would know for sure if baking is forever out of my reach or not after this experiment. How hard could it be with just 4 ingredients?
Here's how it turned out:
The dough and bread. At this point, the wife already loved it and we made sandwiches with it.
Turns out I was missing steps with the video I saw (it was a guy 2 following the video of guy 1, and I was guy3 watching guy2, truly a guy-ception). I had to watch the original video to get all the steps and the results came out better.
And it kept getting better!
So there you have it, my latest hobbies. I have been really enjoying making breads and espressos, particularly when my family and friends all love it. It's something the 20 year old me would never have dreamed of. It's lots of fun and there is so much to learn. The fact that I can make bread whenever I want makes it feel like a life hack. It's feels almost as if bread is free and I can print unlimited bread.
I've been keeping track of how many espressos and breads I've been making. 3 more months until the end of the year, let's see where this goes.