The Vent and Rant Thread

[LCF]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I became completely spoiled in Germany with bread. I go out of my way to get good bread here. I have a good friend who shops at a pretty fantastic market in a town called Poulsbo about 45 minutes from here. he goes once a week and I have a standing order for a bread that is essentially bauern brot. I get it every other week, they are just like the loaves in Germany, quite large!

It's interesting how people react to the German bread. I spent years trying to find a substitution for the bauern brot, since I have never been used to it and prefer white bread instead. I finally found a swiss bread that does the trick for me. But I also enormously enjoy the first bite of homeland bread, when I visit my parents...

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by LCF

It's interesting how people react to the German bread. I spent years trying to find a substitution for the bauern brot, since I have never been used to it and prefer white bread instead. I finally found a swiss bread that does the trick for me. But I also enormously enjoy the first bite of homeland bread, when I visit my parents...

German bread tends to be a bit sour, I think. I like our own bread best.
What kind of bread do you have at home, LCF?

[thinkpad]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Maybe you can start a trend, open a REAL(tm) bakery and find something to occupy your time.

He could join forces with Latinaandgreek

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

Open up a bakery

My best friend (also working on her Ph.D.) says she wants to open up a blues bar. Maybe we should combine the two somehow. And throw a bookstore in for good measure.

[kennyc]

I'm all for that but I'm afraid it would end up on the other side of the world from me and I have to travel to foreign countries to indulge.

[thinkpad]

This is for our US friends here at MR:

The Top 10 Best Bread Bakeries in America

Exactly how far has the American food revolution come? You can measure it in baguettes. A nation reared on the presliced white stuff has succumbed to the addictive pleasures of traditional, artisanal bread. Here's where to find the best Pullman loaves, ciabatta, and sourdough boules in the country.

http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/2...ies_in_america

[wodin]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

San Francisco is famous for sour dough bread that melts in your mouth. Maybe you could get the recipe and share it with your Japanese friends.

Doesn't sourdough require a starter? A piece of unbaked dough from a previous batch that has the proper microbes for the next batch.

Where would one get the starter in a breadless society?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by wodin

Doesn't sourdough require a starter? A piece of unbaked dough from a previous batch that has the proper microbes for the next batch.

Where would one get the starter in a breadless society?

Not really. It can be "started" from the existing air-born yeasts

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough

[WT Sharpe]

All I know is that it's yummy!

[Mortis]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

No Mexican 'fast' food, but there sure are some really good regular Mexican restaurants in KL! We had two favorites that we used to frequent, both with very authentic cooking.

Stitchawl

Stitchawl, thats one of the best parts of KL, the food. There are no real Mexican Fast food places but you are right about the excellent Mexican food.

KL is the only place I have ever been that you could get any type of food, from anywhere and at almost anytime of the day. If I had a nickel for every time one of my Malaysian friends called me at 2am wanting to go for food, I would retire a rich man, well in KL I would be rich

[Stitchawl]

I don't think I'd want to be a professional baker. They have to get up in the wee hours of the morning to be in the bakery by 4 or 5, so that there will be fresh hot breads for the morning customers. I don't function so well at 4am. It's why I play mostly folk and Delta blues guitar instead of jazz...

Bakeries are getting quite popular here as the Japanese population's tastes evolve, but they just aren't making breads. To the Japanese, one either eats rice with a meal or bread, and as rice is the norm here, bread takes a poor second. In 15 years of telling my wife that in the West it's either 'rice or potatoes,' she will still ask me if I want rice or bread. When we travel in Europe she sees bread being served with every meal, even when rice is on the plate, but once back in Nippon, she reverts to the local thinking.

I'm afraid that it will be another 20 years before good breads get a foothold here. It's been tried many times in the past, but to date, only the trendy ex-pat areas of Tokyo have better breads, and one small bakery in the European section of Kobe. Both too far to travel for a loaf of bread on a Sunday morning. That said, I can get fresh bagels (well, almost bagels) delivered. It's a start!

Stitchawl

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by Mortis

Stitchawl, thats one of the best parts of KL, the food. There are no real Mexican Fast food places but you are right about the excellent Mexican food.

KL is the only place I have ever been that you could get any type of food, from anywhere and at almost anytime of the day. If I had a nickel for every time one of my Malaysian friends called me at 2am wanting to go for food, I would retire a rich man, well in KL I would be rich

Kuala Lumpur does have some great food courts and ethnic areas, that for sure! But spend some time in Singapore. I think you'll find even more variety. Huge outdoor food courts everywhere, as well as international food courts in every department store and shopping building. Same idea as KL, but with even more diversity because of its four-culture population. There is a stronger Indonesian influence there than is found further north.

Stitchawl

[bjones6416]

I have that rice or bread (or potato) mindset, too! I've never been a big bread eater, anyway, but it just seems redundant to me to eat both rice AND bread. Usually rice wins for me.

[natasha_fawn]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

I have that rice or bread (or potato) mindset, too! I've never been a big bread eater, anyway, but it just seems redundant to me to eat both rice AND bread. Usually rice wins for me.

I had "one starch, a meat(/protein), and a green vegetable" drilled into me as a child, so now I can't make a meal without one of each or with more than one starch. Even bread with pasta makes me think twice.

[Mortis]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Kuala Lumpur does have some great food courts and ethnic areas, that for sure! But spend some time in Singapore. I think you'll find even more variety. Huge outdoor food courts everywhere, as well as international food courts in every department store and shopping building. Same idea as KL, but with even more diversity because of its four-culture population. There is a stronger Indonesian influence there than is found further north.

Stitchawl

I've spent a lot of time in Singapore, actually I'll be there after Chinese New Year, and to be honest I prefer Malaysia. I like Singapore more as a place to visit, I think would really hate to live there, its the most generic city I have ever been in, that said, I agree the food is good.
A friend of mine put it this way when he first arrived in Singapore; "If Disneyland had a country, it would be just like Singapore, clean, expensive and anonymous". Honestly I think if you were to pick the entire city up and drop it in any country it would fit, a bad thing? I don't really think so. Any one from Singapore, I'm not saying your City/Country is bad, just that all things considered I'd rather live in Pittsburgh.

I'll pay for that comment, in bad Karma perhaps?

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Mortis

all things considered I'd rather live in Pittsburgh.

I'll pay for that comment, in bad Karma perhaps?

Ah, a W.C. Fields fan, but I thought that was Philadelphia.