Friday Bread Basket 2/14/25
Hello from the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain.
KojiCon 2025: Next week!
The annual all-things-Koji online conference, KojiCon, starts next Monday, featuring a wide variety of events from great speakers, including several friends of Wordloaf. you can find the entire schedule and sign up here.
Improving your day
My pal recently visited Kanto Bakery, a Filipino-Korean Bakery in Cambridge, England and had her day improved. Perhaps just reading about it will improve yours (paywalled, but why are you not a subscriber to Topographic Kitchens yet?):
Their food is not unprepossessing. For their Korean Garlic Bread, soft rolls are baked, cut to unfold like the petals of a chrysanthemum, filled with piped cream cheese, dipped into melted garlic and chive butter, then baked a little longer until their crust is golden. You should see them when they're pulled from the oven. They resemble little erupting volcanoes. Fluffy pandesal are filled with a sticky layer of coconut caramel or stained purple from ube. Their Basque cheesecake is made with ube too. Ensaymadas are showered with shaggily grated Edam cheese and buttercream.
Mandu Rolls made with puff pastry get the dumpling treatment, filled with minced pork, cabbage, and tofu, then brushed with soy, sweet, vinegar sauce. Dumpy little matcha brioche are filled with munggo (mung bean) paste and matcha mascarpone cream then dusted with kinako (roasted soybean). A Gochujang Tuna Melt is made with pandesal shokupan bread as light as air and filled with ingredients that, after toasting, are bright as sunset. Fat little pandesals are filled with pimiento cheese and ham, creamy roasted sesame egg mayo and kimchi butter, or avocado, cucumber, radish and wasabi cream cheese. Cinnamon buns are coiled and filled with rivulets of vivid kalamansi curd.
Rarebit run
Eater’s Amy McCarthy wants you to eat (more) Welsh rarebit:
If you haven’t tried Welsh rarebit, once known as “Welsh rabbit,” it might be because you’re put off by its objectively weird name. No one actually knows where that name came from — the most common theory is that it was originally a rude insult to Welsh people, insinuating that they were too stupid or poor to tell the difference between an actual rabbit and the plate of cheese-sauce-topped toast, popular at pubs across the United Kingdom. But despite its complicated etymological origins, Welsh rarebit is perhaps one of the most under-appreciated — and delicious — foods on the planet…
Although it (unfortunately) isn’t exactly common on restaurant menus, making Welsh rarebit at home is really easy. It starts with a cheesy, stout-infused sauce. You make a quick roux of flour and butter, toasting the two together until the mixture smells slightly nutty. Then, you thin out the roux with a can of stout until it combines into a smooth, thick sauce. From there, you whisk a ton of mature cheddar — I like a blend of Irish, English, and extra-sharp cheddars — into the mixture until it’s thick and gooey. Once the mixture is complete, a few heavy dashes of Worcestershire sauce and a scoop of Colman’s punchy English mustard are added to cut through all that rich cheese and beer.
Avocado smørrebrød forever
Danes have responded to the Orange Menace’s threat to invade Greenland by offering to buy California instead:
California would become “New Denmark,” according to the campaign’s website, while its world-famous theme park Disneyland would be rebranded as “Hans Christian Andersenland”.
Other benefits of the Scandinavian nation purchasing the state include “tech dominance” and “avocado on toast forever,” according to the petition.
“Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates,’” the website reads. “Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality.”
That’s it for this week’s bread basket. Have a peaceful, restful weekend. See you next week.
—Andrew
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