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Bread
For a Middle Eastern, a meal without bread is unthinkable. Yet many nations use rice instead of bread, and indigenous peoples in the Americas ate corn until the first conquistadors arrived in the 15th century. To this day, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indonesians and others in the Orient use rice as their basic starch. In fact rice is a more efficient and prolific crop compared to any other grain. The mixing of flour, salt, water gave rise to culinary development. We can essentially claim the beginning of culinary development to have begun in the first loaf of bread. Since then bread has come a long way. It can be unleavened, or leavened with yeast, produces from whole-wheat flour, rye, corn, barley, cassava, oats, and a combination of one, or two or more grains. Today, in specialized bakeries, you can buy 11-grain bread. Also available are breads infused with herbs, olives, dried fruits, onion, just to name a few adjuncts. Bread is such a powerful food that in antiquity Egyptian governments controlled it from production to distribution as a means of controlling the populace. In France shortage of bread was one of the reasons to triggering the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789. Even today in many Middle Eastern countries, at least one type of bread is government controlled. These controls apply to quality, quantity and price of the loaf, but as everything else in these jurisdictions, no agency bothers much to enforce rules and regulations. Despite modern production methods, the essentials of bread production remained the same consisting of flour, water, salt and yeast. However, today's commercial sandwich bread (4x$") is highly refines, light, contains a lot of air, but has a prolonged shelf life. Taste and texture, however, remain elusive. Nutritionally, bread is a relatively inexpensive source of calories, with respectable offering of proteins. Millions of poor people survive on bread, cheese or olives, teas, or wine, and little else. Of course one can use mashed acorns, ground beans, crushed tree barks, nuts, or chestnut flour, but most balers use primarily finely milled wheat, or rye corn, barley, millet, kamut, spelt and other grains. Wheat flour is preferred because of its gluten content. For centuries people considered highly-refined white bread a sign of affluence and privilege of the rich and sophisticated. Poor people ate coarse-grained brown breads. Of late, whole grain dark breads have become more popular mostly due to their high fibre content. North America is a veritable melting pot of many culture... |
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Eclairs
An éclair is a delicate, individual pastry made with chou paste (choux paste, pâte à choux, cream puff pastry dough). The dough is piped from a pastry bag in an oblong or log shape on baking pans, and baked until it is crisp and hollow inside. It is either filled from a hole made in one end, or split lengthwise and filled. The filling is traditionally a vanilla pastry cream (crème pâtissière), or whipped cream, and usually topped with a chocolate fondant or confectioners' glaze. Other fillings include coffee and rum flavored custard, fruit flavored fillings or chestnut purée, and the topping is usually flavored the same as the filling. |
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