How To Bake Pandesal and Other Breads

When someone buys your book and gives you extra cash for the cost of the book, that tells you a lot. More than a lot. A gazillion a lot. A parking lot! Thank you Jorge, i just had the best sleep ever in 3 months since i got here. I woke up and it was shining bright outside. Not the usual dimly lit room i wake up to every day. Jorge just emailed me that he and his wife talked about giving me extra for the book they paid for and all because they can now have Pandesal anytime they want. Thank you, i knew it was worth waking up at 2 am just to type and retype, edit after edits, uploading the images after another deleting this and replacing it with a better image, browsing over 4 thousand images just to get that one perfect depiction of the step i am writing about. If one picture is missing, i redo the whole recipe all over again. That's 8 -10 hours of back breaking work. I can now say that i did really do a good job after all.

When someone emailed me about Kape at Pandesal, i suddenly felt home sick. Just these two words. Dipping Pandesal in coffee. Who got this phenomenon or practice started? We all know the colonial Spanish era and Gregorio Zaide mentioned our fondness for idling around in the history books (Juan Tamad and siesta), but for breakfast? Who wants to jump up and down when you wake up? This is the answer. Dunking the warm, crispy Pandesal into hot, steaming coffee. How did this thing start? Who invented it? What made the Pinoys dunk their Pandesal? Maybe the Pandesal in those days are rock hard, or maybe it is one way to sweeten the bread. Baka may alamat dito. Is it because the Pandesal is salty in those days? After all, sal means salt right? The Italians love to dunk their Biscotti in coffee, but the Biscotti deserves it. Seriously, Biscottis if not dunked in coffee can give you a free tooth extraction. But the Pandesal? Okay to some, it cools down the coffee. Don't tell me they...