Food and Food Culture

And if sourdough doesn't work out, you can always try making homemade ciabatta if that's your favorite bread.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Properly made sourdough is supposed to be a possible option for people who have certain gastric conditions and food intolerances because of its long fermentation time and the fact that it doesn't rely on commercial yeast. Supermarket sourdough tends to use commercial yeast instead of traditional starters because it decreases the fermentation time. Make sure it's spelt or oat based rather than wheat or rye based, however.

If you're celiac, don't try it — it probably won't help you. This advice is more for people who have things like IBS, or who feel that going gluten-free is leaving them less bloated or gassy. If you have IBS and grains are one of your triggers, sourdough may not work for you.

I haven't tried it myself to see if it works with my gastric condition (and I do have grain triggers, although I get on with oats), but I have noticed that when I make bara brith the traditional way (which also has a long fermentation time — ideally 24 hours, but eight hours is the absolute minimum) I get on quite well with it.

In case anyone isn't sure, bara brith means 'speckled bread'. It's a Welsh bread.... except when it's a cake. Made properly, it's a bread — a fruit loaf, in fact (the raisins/currents/mixed fruits is where the 'speckled' comes in). However, if the yeast is omitted, it becomes a fatless (or extremely low-fat) fruit cake instead. ^note I notice that almost all recipes online that I can find regard it as a cake and do not use the yeast method. They also use butter or margarine in quantities typical for cake-making, which isn't the proper recipe even for the cake form. The point of bara brith is for a slice to be buttered just like a slice of bread — which makes sense for the bread form and the traditional cake form (which uses either no fat at all or a fraction of the fat content a cake would use). You don't go throwing butter or margarine into the cake mix and then put even more butter on a slice when you eat it. That's mad.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 2nd 2018 at 10:23:43 AM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

I never had much luck with making sourdough. Just seemed to be cursed where making a starter was concerned.

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I get where you're coming from. My brother is the one with the bread genes from our baking heritage: I'm pastry.

I swear starters take one look at me when I try to feed 'em on the regular and decide to curl up and die. Whereas he's just forgets them in an airing cupboard for a bit, and they're still as happy as clams in a lagoon.

What gives?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 3rd 2018 at 1:22:53 PM

Since we're talking bread...

I like most breads I've eaten in my lifetime. Ciabatta, sourdough, baguettes, pumpernickel...but I still have a soft spot for mantou.

If you've never tried it, trust me, it's good stuff.

Disgusted, but not surprised

I have a soft spot for flatbread of multiple varieties. Regardless of what it is made with. Wheat, Rye, tatties, even had rice flatbread once I generally like them all. Biscuits though need a more common recipe. The most basic fluffy biscuits are favorites. Rolls I have plenty of wiggle room and have a fancy for rye rolls, sourdough, or even plain ol wheat.

Mantou...you had me at steam bun.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Oct 4th 2018 at 11:08:41 AM

Who watches the watchmen?

The mantou I mentioned are basically steamed wheat rolls. As the Wiki page mentions, not every part of China is good for rice growing, so some parts go with wheat for their carbs.

They're a staple in just about any Chinese restaurant these days. Some places even serve them deep fried with a sweetened condensed milk dipping sauce as a dessert.

Edited by M84 on Oct 5th 2018 at 12:07:52 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

I do like me some steam buns. I mentioned before I have taken to cooking my oven biscuits in a steamer and have liked the results to date.

Who watches the watchmen?

And if you think mantou is good, wait till you try baozi.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Yep. Had em, love em.

I am interested in the Chinese steamed corn bread. That sounds good.

Who watches the watchmen?

Chinese cuisine makes good use of steam cooking. Rolls, dumplings, rice tamales...behold the power of steam.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Re:Bread.

We have small, round (sometimes triangular or rectangular, it's based on the region) deep-fried breads (sometimes sweetened) called bawyrsaq (singular, plural bawyrsaqtar). Our cuisine in general favors frying method of cooking over baking (probably because ovens were too cumbersome to carry around with you. Nomadic lifestyle is nomadic).

I also want to take time to lament the loss of our baked sourdough bread family recipe. Last person in the family who could cook such bread was my maternal grandmother and she didn't pass the recipe to her daughters. Most probably none of them simply bothered to learn.

Edited by Millership on Oct 4th 2018 at 11:53:36 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

It sucks to lose knowledge like that. The best you can do at that point is try to rediscover it based on your memories of the taste.

As for fried bread...reminds me a bit of the fried dough we've got in China. Youtiao, which translates to "oil stick", is well...the name says it all really. It's a strip of dough deep fried in oil. It's a popular breakfast food in parts of China and Taiwan. And like the page mentions, it's often served wrapped in a flatbread of sorts, just in case you thought a stick of fried dough wasn't enough carbs to start your day.

Edited by M84 on Oct 5th 2018 at 2:03:52 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Unfortunately, Grandma passed away in the 90's, and with me (probably) being the youngest person in the family who tried the bread and not remembering how it tastes (apart from it tasting really really good) this is out of option, too. There was a slim chance she had written it down somewhere but even if she did, we couldn't find it.

Spiral out, keep going.

In that case you might as well just try to make sourdough yourself and prepare it to your liking as best you can. It might not be your grandma's sourdough, but it'll be your sourdough. Who knows, maybe that will be the new family sourdough recipe?

Edited by M84 on Oct 5th 2018 at 5:14:35 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Concerning the youtiao, are they crunchy? In the sense of are they closer to the dry end of the bread spectrum or to the soft one?

Spiral out, keep going.

The good freshly made youtiao is crunchy, yes.

There's nothing quite like a breakfast of crunchy youtiao juxtaposed with a warm bowl of rice congee. With a hot cup of tea to wash it down.

Edited by M84 on Oct 5th 2018 at 5:22:04 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Why are we italicising the names?

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Because said names are just English spellings of the actual Chinese names.

Youtiao: 油條

Mantou: 饅頭

Congee is the more recognizable general term for it, though I usually refer to it as 稀饭 (pronounced xīfàn), which translates to "watery rice".

There's also a variant called 粥 (pronounced zhōu) which is thicker than 稀饭.

Edited by M84 on Oct 5th 2018 at 5:54:44 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

That doesn't answer the question, though.

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Because non-English words that are not fully assimilated into common use are correctly italicised. For example, we won't italicise 'café' or 'restaurant' because they're fully assimilated and are considered every-day words. However, youtiao is an uncommon word for the English language and therefore should be italicised.

You'll note that I'm not mentioning the issue of the correct form being Chinese characters rather than anglicised form. That's because, while that is a factor, it's not the overriding reason for why it would be italicsed in English. Even if Chinese languages used the same Latin script as English, we'd still be italicising youtiao. For instance, we don't italicise 'congee' because that's regarded as assimilated despite its original spelling coming from a non-Latin script, which I think comes from a Dravidian language? I'm not sure on that one, but I've got something in the back of my head telling me that it's come to us from India.

Certain words are inconsistently handled, such as déjà vu because it's in that grey area where some organisations and writers treat it as a foreign word and others regard it as assimilated enough to drop the italics. House styles therefore matter for these words and consistency of use throughout a piece of work becomes extremely important (i.e., start as you mean to go on — and I use that short-hand deliberately, because things like i.e., e.g., and etc. are much more likely these days to be not italicised than italicised).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 5th 2018 at 6:32:22 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Huh, didn't think that applied when said foreign word(s) was actually the topic of discussion.

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So, to keep the conversation going...

Coffee

What's your favorite kind of coffee? Do you own a coffeemaker? How do you deal with the coffee addiction?

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Mine is latte with peanut syrup, though I don't drink it quite often since I own a pretty simple electric drip coffee brewer which I want to eventually replace with espresso machine. It's basically two cups of brewed coffee with milk and sugar every day plus a cup of latte if I'm feeling it.

Since I'm a software dev, I don't have a coffee addiction. I have a dependency.

Spiral out, keep going.

I'm partial to Kenyan coffee. The acidity just clicks for me.

Whatever coffee I drink, I take it black. No cream, sugar, milk, etc.

Edited by M84 on Oct 10th 2018 at 6:07:04 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

I like to mix coffee with various kinds of drinks. Among the drinks that I have tried mixing are:

• Milk, but at 1:1 ratio
• Blackcurrant juice
• Cultured milk
• Soy milk
• Strawberry milk
• Ice cream soda