Flavor + Memories = Comfort

Grilled Cheese with Roasted Tomato Soup

Sourdough with black pepper Tillamook cheese.

Tangzhong

While doing some research on dim sum I ran across a recipe for baking a Japanese bread using the Tangzhong Method. I felt a deep need to make this bread, like anything I read about that I haven’t done.


If you Google Tangzhong Method you will see there is no shortage of information or recipes. It starts with bringing water and flour up to 150°, very much like making a roux, but using water and flour only. This mixture then sets overnight under refrigeration. The next day you use it to make the bread dough.

There is some important baking science in action due to this process. The short version is [raw starch is heated in water > starch granules swell in size > amylase leaks out > starch granules collapse > gelatinization occurs > gel is formed when mixture is chilled = moister bread]

I read this on several technical sites:
Starch is a mixture of two carbohydrate polymers, amylose and amylopectin. Different starches contain these two polymers in different proportions. Wheat contains about 25% amylose and 75% amylopectin.

All of this means very little if the bread does not taste great, which you’ll have to believe me until you make it yourself, it is.

Proofing, cutting and forming the tangzhong dough







For some of the small loaves I filled the dough with an English raspberry preserve and Danish gouda cheese.




The finished filled loaves, small rolls and large loaves.

Sticky Monkey

Very little needs to be said here....Sticky Bun x Monkey Bread ÷ Basic Human Instincts = !!

Chicharron de Queso

A properly made chicharron is hard to pass up, a guilty pleasure for sure. I thought about the possibilities of a cheese "chicharron".

For it to resemble a traditional chicharron there were two things I deemed crucially important, first it must be crispy with open pockets of air so that it would be tender and basically disintegrate after the first crunch. Secondly, it needed to be dry yet have a fatty, creamy mouth feel as you ate it.

I paired it with a side of guajillo chile sauce...it is now gone.

Brioche - The King of Bread

I call it the king of bread for several reasons, 1). There are large amounts of butter in the dough so you don’t need to serve butter with it, 2). It’s a complete meal because there’s an extraordinary amount of eggs in it, 3). It wears a crown, and 4). It’s just great bread.

Below are some different shapes & sizes we’re working on. The last picture is not brioche, those are asiago cheese puffs coated with parmesan.