How To Bake Pandesal and Other Breads

Right. I did not even plan to end up doing cakes since i am a bread enthusiast. Cake is just something pretty to eat for me back then but nowadays, caking or baking a cake and decorating it has spread like a virus and you can't help yourself enough. It's just too pretty to not do it. In fact, when done during lull days meaning when you have lots of extra time, decorating a cake can be therapeutic. Just make sure you plan it ahead and everything you need will be there at your table. Piping Royal Icing and Buttercream is cheaper than Gumpaste and Fondant. All you need are the basic piping tips, a parchment paper or piping bag and a tip nail. Prop your tablet in front, or plug your music app and listen to your favorite hit list and pipe away. Royal Icing flowers can harden and keep for at least a year if stored properly. No kid can resist eating these after the candle is blown. I remember throwing a tantrum when i did not get a rose when i was 5 years old. This pink R...

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...