How To Bake Pandesal and Other Breads

This is a story i got from a student from last year's session. It was a rather unusual story and first i heard but what stood out was the fact that it was followed by another story from another student. So, here is this charming lady from Tagaytay who took my bread class and what made her end up in my class was because her son took a bread making class from somewhere but never got to open the bakery they wanted. All equipment in hand, complete with one sack of flour, she decided to give it a try since she can't convince her son to give it a go. It was sad right? Proof that baking is not for everyone. I don't blame him, he must have some other noble ideas of his own but what i didn't like was the fact that had he gotten some decent training, maybe it would have been different. Not for me to judge because i was not there. Totally. Well, we all have different ideas on how to conduct our classes, same way we are different from each other. I like to make the students work....

While on vacation here in New York, I'm taking my time to bake some favorites that my nephew have not seen yet. Below are some of the baked goodies we did together.

My first order of business for this next vacation is to teach my nephew how to bake. He has come of age, finished high school with no failing marks (although he has gained a lot of weight all this time) and so i said, this is the perfect time to teach him all the basics while he stews at home. No rush to find work yet, although in the past i would ask him to help me bake, i think his mind was a little off somewhere, to his League of Legends game and podcasts. This time, i can see it in his eyes. He wants to learn indeed. I told him right off the bat. The money is in food. Especially breads. Never mind if you don't perfect your cakes, i prefer that you master and start honing your skills in baking the best bread ever. Last year, i taught him how to bake a carrot cake, scaled down to the diabetic level, my term for reducing the sweetness down to a level where it's not too cloyingly sweet but not too bland it tastes like hospital food. So he gets that, and really loves makin...

I finished my one one one last August, fortunately my student arrived and made it on time before i left or went back to New York. Originally, she was asking for a September 23 to 27 date and since my flight was September 7, i had to decline her request. I was surprised to hear from her a couple of days later when she changed her mind and decided to go home so she can catch up with me. Paid her deposit and we set the date. 3 days later, she sent me a photo of one of her cook, badly burned and all bandaged up from the hospital. Class postpone. I prayed for her that she gets well so my student can still make it. I was thinking, she would have to wait till December and well, December being a busy month, i have a feeling we will not make it and i have to return her deposit. Praise G-d, she made it and we had a really really fun session. Her goal was to bake Pandesal and Ensaimada. She has a restaurant in Taiwan and she caters to Pinoys there selling Chicken Inasal which judging from her...

This is the only session I had so far where i used 2 different brands of flour which is Globe by Universal Robina and Sun Moon Star by Pilmico. Now, if you have attended my class, and I know some of my former students still read my blog then you know that i preach water and adore first class flours with a high protein content. Anything that is lower than my expected level is out of the book just like this popular brand I will call Brit (not it's real name). If you know your history and you bake breads, you know what this brand is. Now, you can certainly email me so I can divulge to you in secret what this horrible I mean disappointing brand of first class is. First off, it does not deserve it's price tag. Too expensive for an over P800.00 per sack flour when a P720.00 sack can use up more water. Why is that important? Well, too long to discuss but I hope your teacher can tell you why. If not, then you went to the wrong school. So here I am, using my student's flour ( the...

Just finished my one on one the other day and I enjoyed it so much because I have a chef, a professional  chef at that who owned a business once for the first time.  I got to play with my lessons once again which I always do depending on who and what the student needs. He is not new to this, he owned a pizza shop once and he is a culinary graduate. I have met quite a number of chefs before and not were as humble as Chris. You can truly see and I told myself this during class, this guy has a good heart. I prayed to Hashem that I truly truly end up helping him achieve his goal. And that is to bake good bread eats. Why bread eats? I use that term to define how bread is not just a type of food you put jellies and jams on. It's something you build your food around and within because bread to me is not a snack.  It's my dinner and my lunch.  My breakfast and my midday hunger buster. When I eat bread, in get satisfied I end up not eating rice. When I eat bread I feel a ve...

Just finished my cake classes and basic royal icing and buttercream  decorating the other day and I am so happy with the results. My students never had a background so it was kinda like walking on egg shells as I have to be careful not to step on the gas too much.  Honestly, my student said one of them had a headache after the first day of cake decorating. I think I went too fast I admit that so instead of just two days of cake decorating we stretched it for 3 days so they won't get a nose bleed. It was fun. I did not teach cake decorating last year because my brother died and I was not up to it. This time I had to dig up stored cake deco tools and stuff for my student's one on one session. Didn't realize i have very few Wilton piping paper which I prefer over Ateco. Why not Ateco? The tape does not adhere, in fact i still have a roll of this stuff and i just use it to line my cookie sheets. So i ran out of parchment paper and since I did it intend to teach,...