This week has been ‘okay.’ Even though things sucked pretty badly last week, I have been talking with my friends, focusing on my kendo and curling activities, and of course…baking for this column with Love, Eorzean Style. Things aren’t perfect for me, but I am trying to do everything I can.
Day by day, step by step.
I will make it through the bad things in my life. Sometimes, it is difficult to believe it, but I know that I will be okay ultimately.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
This week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe is the 24th recipe in The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook! The Ishgardian Muffin recipe comes from the Coerthas Region of Eorzea, has an ‘Easy’ level difficulty to it, and honestly did not seem all that hard to make! I felt really confident about this week’s recipe attempt, and here is what it is supposed to look like:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
This week’s featured ingredient is Bread Flour! I honestly had no idea that there were so many different types of flour before I started Cooking Eorzea, and I keep having to buy air-tight containers to store the excess flour in. This week’s featured ingredient, bread flour, was a completely new discovery to me!
Bread flour has a high protein count to it that assists in helping to make airy yeast-made bread recipes. It made somewhat harder-to-knead dough than, say, the bacon bread, but it turned out to be really good to make muffins with!
My Cooking Attempt
Let’s take a look at this week’s Cooking Eorzea ingredients!
I added the bread flour, the whole-wheat flour, the salt, the sugar, and the yeast together in a bowl before blending them all together.
In a separate bowl, I added together the oat milk, the water, and the butter. I then heated it all together in the microwave and then blended it together.
I then took the heated wet ingredient’s temperature. It was too high, and so I kept letting it cool until it was between 100 degrees and 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once it was cooled, I poured the wet mixture into the dry mixture.
I then tried to blend the ingredients until the dough came together. However, it was a little too sticky and so I added some more bread flour in.
I then finished blending the dough together by hand, and I rolled it into a ball.
I put the dough ball back into the bowl for the moment. I then got out the olive oil and I coated the inside of a glass bowl with the olive oil.
I placed the dough ball inside, coated the top of the ball with olive oil, and then covered it and placed it into the refrigerator for 16 hours.
The next day, I scattered all-purpose flour over the kneading surface and then I got the dough out of the fridge. You can see that the dough has really risen overnight!
I turned the dough out onto the kneading surface, and I punched it down.
I then kneaded the dough for a couple of minutes before I rolled it into a ball-ish shape.
After draping the dough ball with a kitchen towel to rest for an hour, I scattered some cornmeal on a baking sheet.
Here is what the dough looked like after an hour. To be honest, I didn’t see THAT much difference.
I pulled out my rolling pin and smoothed the dough out until it was about a half-inch thick.
I got out my biscuit cutter, and I stamped out a bunch of circles in the dough.
I then covered the tray with another kitchen towel.
I was surprised at the amount of dough left over, and so I rolled the dough back up into a ball, flattened it out again, and then stamped out more dough circles. I then took that left over dough, rolled it up again, flattened it out again, and then stamped out the rest. At this point, the dough started to break and so I was definitely done.
I covered the bottom of a second baking tray with cornmeal, placed all the dough circles on that one, and covered that second tray with a kitchen towel as well. I then left both trays to rise for an hour.
Here is how they all looked after the hour. I saw a real difference, to be honest.
I then heated up a non-stick skillet and placed a few of the dough circles, cornmeal side down, into it. I let them cook for five minutes after covering them with a lid.
After the bottom side was done, I flipped each muffin over to cook the other side through.
And here is Cooking Eorzea‘s finish dish photo for Ishgardian Muffins!
I then tried them out, and they were AMAZING. The muffins were cooked through perfectly, and they were airy and fluffy. They definitely were delicious, and I did not burn them through like I feared that I might! Because I made so many of them, I ate a few and then took the rest to my friends to finish off because I did not need to eat nearly two-dozen muffins by myself.
Afterword
This recipe is the perfect example of a ‘base ingredient’ recipe. The Ishgardian Muffins, while good by themselves, are clearly meant to be integrated into other recipes that call for muffins as an ingredient. Thankfully, the next two weeks will have recipes that will be incorporating this dish as a base ingredient. I will also be remaking these muffins for each recipe attempt that incorporates them, and so I will be remaking this recipe each week as well, though I won’t be showing each step for the Ishgardian Muffins like I am today.
‘Thank you’ time to those that make this column possible! I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on Twitter.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. Cooking Eorzea wouldn’t be possible without both of them creating this playground of a world.
Next Week
Next week’s recipe is for Royal Eggs as we go backwards in the cookbook to make another breakfast recipe that incorporates the Ishgardian Muffin! I am very nervous about breaking the hollandaise sauce, as it will be the first time that I have ever made such a sauce.
Please tune in next Friday to see how it goes!
Have you made a hollandaise sauce before? If so, do you have any tips?
Let us know in the comments below!
