Bacon Epi

It seems that I haven't posted about bread for a long time on this blog. Well, that's about to change since I'm on a bread making kick. There are too many bread recipes I need to share :).

Now that I think about it, this was one of the first recipes I put together back when I started baking. The story is that in high school, my mom used to buy these long loaves of chewy french bread filled with pockets of bacon from a bakery at a local mall. I loved that it could be easily pulled apart into individual servings. My family always referred to it as "bacon bread". Eventually though, the bakery went out of business and we had no more bacon bread.

A few years later, when I finally took up baking, I thought back to the bread and realized that it was going to be difficult to find a recipe since I had no idea what it was called. But I figured the recipe wouldn't be too hard to recreate, just a baguette recipe with some bacon. After a bit of research, I finally discovered that this is referred to as "pain d'epi". An "epi" is an ear of wheat, which is what the shape is supposed to resemble. This bread recipe is one of my go-to recipes because it's not too difficult and it isn't that time consuming (relatively speaking for bread making), and of course, it's delicious.

Coffin Bread (棺材板)

One last Halloween post. Here is a delicious main dish type of recipe: coffin bread (棺材板). This is an actual dish originating from Tainan, Taiwan, the city my dad is from (so it seems appropriate that I should know how to make this). There, coffin bread is found served at the night markets along with all those other yummy Taiwanese dishes.

So what is coffin bread? Think of it as Tainan's version of San Francisco's clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. It's a crunchy golden toast "coffin" filled with a creamy seafood chowder. In Taiwan, the bread isn't actually coffin shaped; that's my own little Halloween twist/literal take on the name. Instead the bread is a fried, hollowed out toast block, the perfect vehicle for the hot chowder.

The Sorting Hat

As I was brainstorming ideas for my Harry Potter party, the idea of the Sorting Hat made out of bread popped up in my mind. I was intrigued by the thought of a hat shaped bread that my friends could tear pieces off of and eat with a dip of some sort. In part, I was inspired by the large cornucopia bread centerpiece I made for Thanksgiving two years ago and served with a soft cheese.

I needed a bread recipe that used whole wheat flour, which would give the dough a darker color. Also, the bread dough needed to be pliable and not expand too much while baking. I decided on a pita bread recipe based on a memory of my attempt to make pita bread. I remembered that pitas contain ww flour and are easily shaped. I also knew from experience that when the pita breads aren't rolled out thin enough or if the oven temperature is too low, pitas don't puff up, which was bad for making pita bread, but perfect for my Sorting Hat idea.

I tried it out on the day of the party, hoping it would work as I planned. I made the dough, shaped it, and baked it. It was a success! I chose to serve it along with a spinach and artichoke dip I made right before the party. The Sorting Hat bread turned out to be quite an interesting but delicious dish at my Harry Potter feast.

Turkey for Lunch... Turkey for Dinner...

Every year, right before Thanksgiving, I am always looking forward to feasting on all the wonderful food to come: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, cornbread, yams, and pumpkin pie. But, after Thanksgiving is over, I remember immediately why Thanksgiving should be a once a year holiday...
a refrigerator full of leftovers.

The thought of repeating the same meal day after day makes me grow weary at the thought of another plate of turkey. Luckily, turkey is quite versatile and can be used in a variety of ways. Usually, the weekend after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, my family has turkey sandwiches for lunch, an alternative to enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers without having the same full-blown feast.

This year, in anticipation of the traditional turkey sandwich lunch, instead of Black Friday shopping, I stayed at home and baked cornucopia-shaped bread rolls with hollows perfect for stuffing with turkey and other sandwich fixings. Cornucopias seem to be the symbols of Thanksgiving, commonly displayed filled to the brim with an abundance of food; for these rolls, the bounty is, of course, our turkey leftovers. I was inspired by the giant bread cornucopia that I baked as a centerpiece last year for Thanksgiving, realizing that mini, individual versions would be perfect for sandwiches.

カメ のメロン パン Turtle Melon Pan

One of my close friends is studying abroad in Tokyo this semester (I'm very jealous) and I've been keeping up with her travels on Facebook. I was looking through her photo albums when I spotted really cute turtle-shaped melon pan in a photo of a Japanese bakery display. Next thing I knew I was on Google searching up a melon pan recipe as the thought "I must make turtle-shaped bread" ran through my mind.

If you have no idea what メロンパン a.k.a. Melon Pan is, let me explain. First of all, in Japanese "pan" means bread. "Melon" refers to the look of the bread, not the taste (although some recipes add melon flavoring to the bread, but that's rare). The criss-crossed surface is supposed to look like the rind of a rock melon/cantaloupe, but in the case of turtle-shaped melon bread, it makes the perfect shell.

Melon pan consists of a lightly sweetened bread topped with a layer of sugar cookie dough, scored with the checkerboard pattern. I think melon pan is a close relative of Hong Kong's pineapple bun (polo bun), except the pineapple bun tends to have a softer bread base and a more buttery and fragile topping. Melon pan is delicious. But, turtle melon pan is even better!

II: Mummies!

Monster of the day: Mummies! Because I usually spend most of my time baking sweets, I thought I'd be good to include at least one savory treat in my Halloween baking fest.

On the Pillsbury website, I saw a recipe for Crescent Mummy Dogs and thought that the mummies were pretty cute and perfect for Halloween. Since I love making things from scratch, I opted to make my own bread dough to use for shaping (but if you don't have time, instant crescent dough will work in a snap). I used a roll recipe from America's Test Kitchen along with the general idea from the Pillsbury recipe to create this Halloween snack.