Breads from Around the World, Episode 2 - England

Episode 2 - England(?) - English Muffin

Contrary to popular belief, the English muffin wasn't invented by McDonald's. Contrary to another popular belief, the English muffin wasn't invented in England! Ok, that part may or may not be true. While doing some research on this topic before writing up this post (but after having baked them), I learned that there's a lot of dispute on where the English muffin came from. Some claim that it was invented by a British immigrant to the US (you know, the iconic Thomas's English muffins) in the late 1800's. Some claim that it was in England few hundred years ago, where the song "The Muffin Man" also came about. Are English muffins really English? Is Mongolian beef actually Mongolian? What's the deal with French toast? In the age of fake news and how you can't trust anything you read on the internet, I'm not sure what's the actual truth. But since this blog is about breads from around the world, I'm going to believe that it's indeed actually from England.

I used the recipe from King Arthur's website. They came out really good. They have a slight crusty exterior, and a soft chewiness of the interior, with the classic 'nooks and crannies'. The hardest part was trying to shape them into a nice round shape with even thickness. Another hard part was grilling them on the pan. Since my pan isn't so large, I had to bake them into 4 different batches, and finish the rest on the oven. 

I would like to revisit this with a sourdough starter and whole wheat flour. And also, I'd like to put crumpets on the list for a future episode, as this bread seems to be more popular in England than English muffins.

Breads from Around the World, Episode 1 - Morocco

Introducing my new blog series: Breads from Around the World.  Each episode, I will attempt to bake bread from far away places, and share my results with you.

Episode 1 - Morocco - Khobz

When I was visiting Morocco, besides getting scammed, I would see this bread served at every meal. For breakfast, it would accompany the fresh fruits and yogurt with jam and honey, or for dinner, it would ride alongside a tagine clay pot. It can be eaten plain, or with your favorite spread, or dipped in sauces and soups.

It's a simple bread. Jony Ive would probably describe it as unassuming. Unpretentious .Simple, yet elegant.

Apparently in Morocco, there are communal ovens, where people can prep the dough and take them to a communal oven (faraan) to be baked.

Here is a youtube video of one in action:

Some more interesting bits about faraans from this article:

Somehow, with dozens of loaves on the floor of his oven, the baker always knows whose bread is whose. But just in case he forgets, most people make an identifying mark on their dough.

“My housekeeper put a special stamp on the bread made out of iron with a design, a sort of family mark on it,” Ms. Wolfert said. “She didn’t sleep well unless there was a sack of wheat in the house to make bread.”

I saw several recipes online, and I opted to go with this recipe, mainly because it called for a significantly less amount of dry yeast, and noted the specific temperature of the water for mixing into the dough. Coming from a sourdough background, I could appreciate this attention to detail. I wasn't sure if my dry yeast was still good, so I added a tablespoon of my sourdough starter that was sitting in the fridge. I also added some toasted sesame seeds on top. The result turned out really nice. Crusty exterior with soft, chewy interior. It went well with marinated steak, stir fried veggies, and yogurt!

Stay tuned for the next episode of Breads from Around the World!

Bread

This blog has no theme. I write about whatever I want. This entry is about bread.

Sourdough loaf.

Today I baked a sourdough bread. It was a lot of effort. First there's the idea of a starter. It's basically a jar of flour/water mixture that you feed constantly with more flour and water to keep the yeast and bacteria alive and flourishing. You get that going for a few days, then you make your dough with it. That's step 1 of 13.

I followed the recipe from this NY Times link. Not counting the starter business, the whole ordeal was a 2 day effort, with a lot of mixing, waiting, folding, waiting, shaping, waiting. And more waiting. But the whole process is a bit therapeutic, and pleasantly enjoyable. A Carmex once told me he felt the same way about gardening.

The taste of this sourdough is amazing. Really soft and chewy interior, and really crisp, almost crackling crust. Actually when you take the dough out of the oven, you can hear the crust crackling. That's how you know it's a good crust. The taste rating is very close, just slightly behind, the taste rating of a fresh baguette.

Almond pistachio cherry biscotti.

Few weeks ago, I baked biscottis. They were really easy, compared to baguettes and sourdough. And tasty. They were gone real quick. I should bake more of these.

Baguettes.

I think I've gotten my baguettes down pat now. The ones above turned out really nice. They will taste different from the ones in Paris, but I kinda prefer mine. The crust is a bit crisper and the crumb a bit softer.

With baguettes and sourdough under my belt, I feel like I can take on pretty much anything. Next on my list (not in any order)

- pretzels - oh those glorious pretzels I remember from Germany. Can I come close?

- bagels - these might be too much work for their value, but something I'm considering

- naans - who doesn't like these? I mean, c'mon.

- that super-crusty-super-hard-but-so-tasty-bread from Norway. I don't even know what that bread was called, or how I'm even going to research it. But I still dream of it.

The Halal Guys

The famous NYC street food gyro, The Halal Guys, finally opened in my home town of Atlanta. Well, not exactly in Atlanta proper, but in a po-dunk area called Chamblee (a.k.a. Chambodia, due to the overwhelming population from the country of Cambodia). Which is great for me, because I'd much rather drive to Chamblee than try to battle my way through the Atlanta traffic, only to be met with more anxiety and stress as I try to find an empty parking spot.

I actually went there on opening day, Saturday, about 90 minutes after the opening bell, and saw this:

The line on opening day. Must have been at least 200 people standing in line. I decided to try again another day.

The wait then must have at least been 4 hours, because when I went today (730 P.M. on a Monday night), there was about 50 people in line, and it took me an hour to get my food. I cradled it back home, making sure nothing got tossed around during the drive. Upon arriving, I hastily popped the plastic top and stoked the center with a fork, to give it a good mixin', if you will. 

The goodness.

Let's get one thing out of the way: that pita bread is atrocious. I admit I have become some sort of a snob when it comes to anything baked, but this pita was flabby and lifeless. If I were some disrespectful punk in another universe, I would have flung this back at the chef, or the robotic machine that made it.

Ok, now the good part. The top of the platter is almost entirely covered by the gooey, but slightly tangy white sauce, with a dash of the spicy red sauce. And that red sauce packs a kick. The dude behind me asked for extra red sauce. I merely snickered to myself, judging him silently.

Underneath the sauces, there are some shredded lettuce and tomatoes, the crispy slices of the beef and chicken gyro meat (you did get the combo platter, didn't you?), and the impossibly-bright-neon-glowing-but-oh-so-tasty orange rice.

bowl.mix();
eat.begin();

The ratio of meat to rice to sauce seems to have been a result of years of careful experimentation, as the combination tastes simply delicious and delightful. The meat is crispy on the edges, packed full of flavor, and the white sauce complements it exquisitely. The orange rice adds some body to the mix and at the same time, adding yet another layer of aroma. The lettuce and tomatoes do an excellent job of softening the heat from the red sauce. You almost begin to recall some faint, hidden memories of your Afghan grandmother cooking up such a dish for you in the country side.

As good as it was, the portion was huge, and I could only finish about 2/3 of it. I think a small sized platter will suit me just fine. I will go back to try their falafels as well.

10/10, would eat again

Travelogy

I made a note of this while I was traveling, but didn't get a chance to write about it until now. When traveling, you can pick two of the following: money, time, and flexibility.

Pick two. Which would you pick?

Let's take a look at each case.

1) Pick time and money: This choice seems the most logical. What's more important than time and money? However, when you're traveling, picking time and money over flexibility can leave you feel a bit constrained. If you decide you want to stay at a city for longer than you originally planned, too bad. It's going to cost you not only in money, but it will also cost you in time (rearranging any travel plans and lodging reservations). You simply can't afford to change plans along the way if you wish to save money and leave time for sight seeing. Planning can take several hours -- you might even need to devote a whole day out of your precious schedule while you're on the road. 

2) Pick time and flexibility: This is the choice for ballers. You have all the money in the world. You can change plans on the fly, or don't even make any plans. Just go wherever you want and stay for as long as you like. Money works as a lubricant here, greasing the various parts well enough for the machinery to function properly and efficiently.

3) Pick money and flexibility: Ah, the frugal traveler with all the time in the world. The recent college grad with no job lined up. Or just a bum. If you have all the time in the world, you can optimize your trip to death, squeezing every last bit of penny from your budget. Remember the Traveling Salesman problem? Given N cities, with varying cost of travel between each city, what is the most cost effective and and most efficient route to take? How long should you stay in each city? What sites should you see, and in what order, and for how long, given the constraints of n dollars and m days.? Where should you eat for the most bang for the buck? The optimizations are endless, and it's all for the taking, as long as you put in the time to crunch the numbers.

With my trip, I was probably going back and forth among all three types. I did have a finite number of days as my constraint, and I had already booked my return flight from Istanbul. However, I also paid a premium for changing plans along the way. That puts me in the time and flexibility camp (aka, baller), but I still tried to optimize it a bit here and there (the money and flexibility camp, aka, the bum). In doing so, I had to sacrifice my trip time, whereas some days I spent half the day planning for the next steps.

For my next trip, I would do the following:
1) Limit the number of destinations. What I did, traveling to 8 countries and 26 cities in 30 days, was a bit insane. I liken it to taking a sampler platter -- a little bit of everything in one meal. You can get a taste for a lot of things, but you can't really appreciate the depth and the essence of each dish. For my next trip, I will take it easy - maybe a decent sized appetizer, a main course, and a light dessert. I will spend a lot of time to research a few places and focus on those few.

2) Join a tour group. Although the flexibility of going around on your own has its benefits, joining a tour group is more efficient, and you get more out of it. It just makes sense.

Sung had asked whether it was worth it, and whether I would pay 2x to bring a significant other. Yes, yes. He also asked how much I'd pay for a similar experience. I think I could pay up to 2x what I paid for my experience, if my memories of the trip were erased. But if I were to do a similar trip (a lot of cities in a short amount of time) for a similar amount of money, I would pass, and plan the simple trip as I had outlined above.

Similarly, Ziggy asked, if my memories were erased, which part of the trip I would like to do over. Hands down, it would be Marrakesh. Not only because how different the place is compared to most Western countries, but also, and mainly, because of the scam experiences I've had there. It taught me about my own vulnerabilities and weaknesses, so that I can better prepare myself for similar situations in the future. I feel that such experiences are so valuable because they don't happen so often in our daily lives.

Special topics: Bread

I missed the baguette from Paris. So I went to Publix yesterday and bought what looked like a baguette, and it was even labeled as a baguette. However, upon biting into it, the taste and texture was nothing like the bread I had in Paris, and it made me miss it even more.

French baguette from Paris. 1.05 EUR.

I got this baguette in a small boulangerie tucked away in a neighborhood near my hotel. (A boulangerie sells breads, and a patisserie sells pastries. In the US, we lump them together as just "bakery.") There were many other bread on display, really long ones, short and fat ones, round ones. I didn't know what they were, so I just asked for the baguette that I knew and recognized. The bread had a hard crust on the outside, but a firm, chewy inside. Slightly salty, it was good just eating it plain. This simple and unassuming baguette set the bar for the rest of my trip.

Breakfast sandwich from Godt Brot in Bergen, Norway. With coffee and a dessert pastry, the total was something like $20 USD.

Next is a bread from Norway. There is an organic chain bakery, called Godt Brod, that had excellent bread. I got a breakfast sandwich from there. Although a bit pricey, (what isn't in Norway, though?), the bread itself was high quality and tasted delicious. The crust was quite hard, and the inside was slightly firm. The texture doesn't sound all that appealing for what you'd normally find in your typical bread, but it turned out nice, and functioned really well as a sandwich bread. This bread comes in at #2, very close behind the french baguette. 

Typical Moroccan bread served during meals.

I've had this bread on several occasions in Morocco. It's served quite often with meals. Unlike the french baguette which has a slight salty taste, this bread is a bit on the sweeter side. The texture inside is firm and a bit crumbly, and the crust outside is rather hard. It's tastes really good on its own -- I'd eat it as a snack. 

Breakfast plate from my hotel in Istanbul. 

Baskets of sliced bread at our dinner table in Cappadocia, Turkey.

One thing I've noticed in Turkey is that bread is very common. In most restaurants that we went to, bread is free and unlimited. But the bread is very plain and bland, lacking any character of its own. However, what I did find interesting was that for breakfasts, there would be many kinds spreads for the bread: apricot marmalade, orange marmalade, sour cherry jams, blackberry jams, yogurt mixture of some sort, and honey. Bread became a vessel to carry these spreads into my mouth (cue Mitch). 

Having had these various kinds of bread across Europe, I feel like I'm paying more attention to bread now. I'm a bit excited about rediscovering bread in the various bakeries here in town (Alon's, for starters), as I feel like I have something tangible to compare them against. 

Trip cost analysis and other stats

I find data interesting.

Here are some raw data on the cost of the trip. Units are in USD, unless otherwise noted.

trans-continental flights	$1,151.56
European flights	$1,155.83
bank fees	$159.23
hotels	$2,348.68
general spending	$1,526.35
total	$6,341.65

Other stats:

Route by cities:

London -> Paris -> Bergen -> Gudvangen -> Flam -> Floyen -> Copenhagen -> Rome -> Marrakech -> Essaouira -> Athens -> Rhodes -> Santorini -> Istanbul -> Gallipoli -> Canakkale -> Kusadasi -> Troy -> Pergamon -> Kusadasi -> Ephesus -> Pamukkale -> Hierapolis -> Konya -> Cappadocia -> Ankara

Number of European flights taken, not including layovers: 9

Number of obelisks seen: 4

 - London: 1, Paris: 1, Istanbul: 2

Top 3 views: 

- 1. Santorini hike, 

- 2. Norwegian Fjords

- 3. Cappadocia balloon ride

Number of museums visited: 11

 - London: 2 - British Museum, National Gallery

 - Paris: 1 - Louvre

 - Flam: 1 - Flam Railway Museum

 - Essaouira: 1 

 - Athens: 2 - Acropolis Museum, National Archaeological Museum

 - Santorini: 1 - Archaeological Museum

 - Istanbul: 1 - Hagia Sophia

 - Cappadocia: 1 - Goreme Open Air Museum

 - Ankara: 1 - Ataturk Mausoleum

Number of times scammed: 3, all in Marrakech

Number of pastries and breads eaten: like a billion

Best dessert: Paris

Best coffee: Paris

Best pastries: Paris

Best bread: Paris

Best McDonalds: Paris

Best ice cream: Rome

Most asian tourists: Rome

Cities I'd like to move to, if I had to move now: Paris, Santorini

City I'd like to retire to, if I had a billion dollars: Bergen

Cities I'd like to revisit: Rome, Santorini