Bake it or not

Unleavened breads were usually the food on the table during ancient times. Even in Biblical times until today, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is annually celebrated by Christians around the world. With the introduction of yeast, baking soda, baking powder and other leavening agents, bread making or the pastry industry will never be the same.

If you compare the unleavened bread from the bread with leavening agents, the former is oftentimes hard to eat if you don’t soak it in wine or in coffee but with leaveners, you can eat it alone because it is soft and succulent.

I remember when I was a child, my father always urged me to help him prepare the ingredients in making pan de sal or salty bread. He also made batches of local doughnuts and the so-called tsakoy (cha-koy) or stick doughnut (the taste are the same when you fry it) because he used to sell it in our retail sari-sari store. My task was to separate the egg yolk from egg white, although I often committed mistakes by breaking the yolk. He added salitre or potassium chlorate into the flour to make the dough softer. This is aside from the risen yeast that he added to the flour before mixing. He also added vegetable oil and milk to make it softer and succulent. While for the doughnut, baking powder is used and margarine (vegetable oil) for baking. With this tedious orientation, little did I know that it will be valuable in my present job as a cook in a merchant ship.

Baking Supplies

Here in the Philippines, if you buy a sack of wheat flour, it will cost you more or less 50 dollars due to its high demand in the world market. Because of this, pastry products (breads, cakes, et cetera) become expensive, too. And the portioning suffers.

Alternative flour, coming from cassava or kamoteng kahoy is being marketed here in the country. The bread products are more cheaper but the nutritional value competes with wheat flour.

For home consumption, wheat flour is retailed in a 25 kilogram-paper bag, just like in the United States of America. Ship chandlers are careful for its handling and distribution because it’s a perishable goods that can be contaminated easily by fungi or molds when not stored properly (about 6-10 degrees Celsius inside the vegetable provision room).

Pizza dough should stay frozen when stored; the same with pie crusts. Yeast is stored in the fish room (-5 to -10 degrees Celsius) to prevent from expanding.