We rode the bullet train into Yokohama yesterday, the city made famous in rap songs for their tires. We came to meet up with some friends of ours who used to live in the States when we were growing up. The younger one and my brother are the same age, and they see each other occasionally because he's in college in the states, but the older one and I who are the same age haven't seen each other in probably 10 years or so, so it'll be a nice reunion of sorts.
The bullet train is pretty much the antithesis of the ubiquitous buses in third world countries. It's clean, quiet, fast, roomy, and expensive. It's nice, and something I'll appreciate that much more when I'm riding the rickety road vehicles they call "chicken buses" in Guatemala next week. We zoomed from Nagoya to Yokohama in about an hour, mostly at speeds in excess of 150 mph. When we arrived, we checked into our hotel, then met up with our friends for dinner at a Japanese place that served food - tapas style.
My brother stayed at their house last night, so my mom and I went out to breakfast this morning. What always strikes me about Japan is how good the food is, but especially the bread. I would argue that it's just as good, if not better than French bread, which is pretty much the gold standard of bread. The Vietnamese seem to have pretty good bread since they were a former French colony, along with some African countries, but I think Japan sent people to France back in the day to learn from the best and bring it back here. To give you an idea, if you could think of the best bread you've ever had in the US, that's the kind of bread that's available at every street corner Circle K in Japan. It makes me wonder, what in the world do they put in this bread that makes it so good? I'm thinking it must be the flour because the bread is so soft it feels like you're eating a cloud. Mmmm, clouds. That's it for now, I gotta go do some touristy stuff, peace out.
2 comments:
Yosuke, good bread comes from the baking process. Long glutenous protein fibers inside the leavened flesh of the loaf give heft and texture, while outside, the toasted crust adds flavor. This is difficult to accomplish without a constant source of moisture to evenly bake the crust. The bread must simultaneously steam, toast, and ferment.
The flour is in Japan is probably from America, Australia, China, or maybe even super subsidized Japan. Also, I would not put it past the Japanese to have a special patented milling process to alter the organic chemistry of baking such as pitted grains of flour (like a golf ball) for more texture, more flavor, more crust, less cooking time at lower temperatures, and even, just even, less water usage.
You can bake your own great bread as described by Mark Bittman in the following article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=beb360985f64aa37&ex=1181793600
Yeah, I found out most of the flour is probably imported, so it's not that - it must be something in the process. That bread recipe you posted is great, my friend told me about it a few months ago, and there was a period of a few weeks where I made that bread every few days. However, it makes the more chewy artisan bread, not the Japanese style bread.
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