How To Insult An Entire Nation

This is the first installment of my newest segment: “How to insult an entire nation.”

 

1. Bread!

 

As you may know, there are basically two types of cultures out there. There are bread cultures and there are rice cultures. Japan just so happens to be of the rice culture. They eat rice. They beat rice. They stretch it, they ferment it, they drink it. Heck, they’d smoke it if they could figure out a way. And as much as I enjoy rice, I’ll always be a bread guy myself. There’s a simple reason why I’m always happiest on Mondays and Wednesdays. Those are the days where I get bread for lunch instead of rice. Now bread is certainly sold in Japan. Some of the bread is quite tasty even, but you have to look hard to find it. Solution? Make your own! So I finally went out and got two 2kg bags of bread flour and it’s off to the races!

 

I made bagels last year, and those came out already, but I’m gonna try and put out a concerted effort to bake some bread. I’ve always loved the idea of rising the bread at night, then waking up in the morning, popping it in the oven and having fresh bread in the morning before work! I made my first one at night, but hey! Gotta start somewhere! I don’t know what this bread is called necessarily, but it’s the simplest of the simple. About 2 cups of flour, 1 1/4 cups of water with 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (the equivalent of one yeast packet in the states) and a teaspoon of salt. The four basic building blocks of bread.

A pretty good picture too!

Mmmm close up shot!

I just couldn't wait for it to cool properly so I cut it in half after like five minutes of cooling. Mistake. But it still tastes pretty good!

The taste is a little yeasty and I’m sure I’ll work on that in the future, but the crust is crusty (I brushed some egg on top like you would with pastry) and added some sesame seeds!

BREAD!