Baking Ladi Pav - a beautiful experience

By now you know that I have been venturing into the baking world every now and then to find recipes that would help me improve my skills. On one such trip I came by this beautiful blog and Aparna's ladi pav recipe and the pictures were just too hard to resist. I just had to try it.

Baking pav was not one that I had ever contemplated and this is probably attributable to the ease of access. All I had to do was step out of my home and I could easily get my supply of freshly baked pav. Why then take the trouble of doing it all on your own? Guess you realize the value of things when it is not available. My tastebuds desirous of biting into some fresh pav and homemade bhaji, I decided to give the recipe a try.

I must admit that bread baking is not one that I had ever tried and so was comfortable doing a set of mini pavs first. Also had heard and read a lot on how yeast can play a spoilsport if not handled by experts. The step by step recipe provided the perfect guide and I decided to go on. The recipe suggested 3.5 to 4 cups of flour for 15 beautiful golden pavs. I decided to give it a try with 1 cup and make a batch of mni pavs. To my amazement it was really simple and can't describe in words the aroma of freshly baked pav that filled by home. I was so excited to see the small balls grow in size and merge so perfectly into one another like siamese twins. A golden crispy outside and a soft netted inside...I got it right the first time...yeah!!..and can't explain how happy and elated I felt at this success.

I went on to try on the larger version and Aparna's recipe is just perfect...the right place for a baking beginner to get started with some home baking.
You can check out Aparna's recipe here. For my pavs I used sugar and not honey. Made my second lot of larger pavs with 4 cups of maida/all-purpose flour. The yeast that we get here is the powdered form of instant dry yeast and so I added 1/2 tsp(not heaped) for every cup of flour. Above are some of the pictures from my baking ladi pav project...didn't get a chance to photograph the larger pavs as I baked them for hubby's birthday party and they were gone before I could say "click".