YELLOW DROP FLOWER CENTERS, WIRED FLOWERS 3 PETALS, CHRYSANTHEMUM

It's that time of the year again. What is your covid xmas plan ( if you have not been selling your baked products yet)? Mine is to make Xmas cookies, i have several cookie cutters that i bought from Walmart and so i plan to do just that. Maybe make the Minion Gingerbread house if i can muster enough strength, or a cookie xmas treee. I prefer the latter though since i think the xmas cookies will look good on a traditional xmas edible tree. Yum!

What recipe to use? I have three choices, Gingerbread, Chocolate and Vanilla Sugar Cookies. OR maybe all three flavors.

Anyway, like most who have been self quarantining these days i do miss my usual routine before the Pandemic. Let us pray that this will be over soon and we will get back to at least 85 % normal, maybe not that too confident that we set aside the usual precautions such as wearing your masks, alcohol and taking your vitamins.

I honestly became more aware of my health these past few months, i am a cancer survivor so i know how to eat "healthy" but i increased my ginger and turmeric tea intake, green tea and ate more veggies compared to the last 3 years before the Covid started.

For baking lessons, hopefully by March, my new school will be operational and the Vaccine will be here. Email me for your questions or see me in my facebook account csherquefranca for baking updates...

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3rd Class Flour, What's It All About

For starters i cannot make this Hard Monay if i did not bring any 3rd class flour or soft weak flour to New York. Once i ran out of 3rd class and tried Cake Flour, it turned bad, do not even think of using All Purpose, it will be soft but not chewy as this one made with yes, 3rd class indeed. So third class is hard to find here in the US if you will use that term. You have to say or look for soft wheat flour, that's it, not hard wheat flour, not cake or All purpose but something in between these two. It is easy to find in the Phil., just ask your local bakery suppliers and they know it is Tercera. Tercera is not for bread, bakers use it basically for cookies, cakes and other pastries, but we bakers know how to create bread recipes using part of this flour with the bread flour or hard wheat flour. It makes a softer version of any of your fave breads, with a cheaper price tag. Plus if i own a bakery, i get to use the third class for my cakes and cookies, lowering my food cos...

Cutting Pandesal, Baston Style

So how do we really do the Baston style "singkit" cut? First start with a slightly stiff dough, if your dough does not have eggs or eggyolks, a hydration of around 55% is ideal. I have seen bakers use less water, but that will make your Pandesal too dry and dense after 1 day or so so try to keep it slightly on the soft side, but not too sticky. Why? If you use a sticky dough for the Baston style cut, the dough will spread and will have a flat look rather than a rounded shape we are all familiar with. In Tagalog, "lalapad" ang dough so medyo flat ung Pandesal. So after you mix the dough, divide it into 2 to 4 portions if you are mixing kilogram. Experienced bakers divide their dough into 500 gram portions, i do mine the same way. Flatten the dough, focusing more on the length and not on the height. The height of the dough should be around 2 to 3 inches only. Next, fold the dough while pinching the edges making sure the dough surface ...

Kape at Pandesal

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...

How To Bake Pandesal and Other Breads

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