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Bread is the latest ‘it’ food in Metro Manila
By Clinton Palanca |
3:12 am | Thursday, January 23rd, 2014
30606644
HOMEMADE sourdough bread
Bread has become the latest obsession in Manila, which can only be a good thing. Pan de sal was recently featured in Saveur, described as “pillowy-soft,” though it needn’t be; the best has the merest semblance of a crust and a mature, slightly fermented, decidedly non-industrial interior.
I used to buy mine from Kamuning Bakery in Quezon City, which no longer uses a wood-fired oven; the closest old-fashioned pan de sal to Manila is Lipa, and the best, they say, is still that of Panaderia de Molo in Iloilo.
Two notable bakeshops are Paul in Taguig and Eric Kayser in Makati.
Eric Kayser opened its first branch inside Rustan’s Supermarket in Rockwell, Makati. Around Christmas last year, the bread lines could have been from a Soviet famine. People would stand in crowds waiting for the baguettes to come out of the oven, and when the trays emerged we would all rush forward, waving our “ration” coupons.
Kayser’s baguette is the classic Parisian baguette, with soft but springy crumb, and a thick, hard crust that quickly gets soggy in our humid atmosphere, but needs just a few minutes in the oven toaster to be once more crunchy and sublime. This, I feel, is the bakeshop’s masterpiece, and that alone justifies its existence.
Its other main draw are the croissants, which also need about two or three minutes in the oven toaster (under a sheet of aluminum foil to prevent the top from burning). Both are not just as good, but better than the average baguette or croissant in Paris, though not as great as the very best you’d get in Paris.
The baguette and croissant are urban inventions. In France, bakers do an afternoon bake for people to take home to dinner, because the best baguettes shouldn’t last more than a few
Paul’s baguette hours. If they do last longer, it’s an ominous sign that preservatives have been added to keep
By Clinton Palanca |
3:12 am | Thursday, January 23rd, 2014
30606644
HOMEMADE sourdough bread
Bread has become the latest obsession in Manila, which can only be a good thing. Pan de sal was recently featured in Saveur, described as “pillowy-soft,” though it needn’t be; the best has the merest semblance of a crust and a mature, slightly fermented, decidedly non-industrial interior.
I used to buy mine from Kamuning Bakery in Quezon City, which no longer uses a wood-fired oven; the closest old-fashioned pan de sal to Manila is Lipa, and the best, they say, is still that of Panaderia de Molo in Iloilo.
Two notable bakeshops are Paul in Taguig and Eric Kayser in Makati.
Eric Kayser opened its first branch inside Rustan’s Supermarket in Rockwell, Makati. Around Christmas last year, the bread lines could have been from a Soviet famine. People would stand in crowds waiting for the baguettes to come out of the oven, and when the trays emerged we would all rush forward, waving our “ration” coupons.
Kayser’s baguette is the classic Parisian baguette, with soft but springy crumb, and a thick, hard crust that quickly gets soggy in our humid atmosphere, but needs just a few minutes in the oven toaster to be once more crunchy and sublime. This, I feel, is the bakeshop’s masterpiece, and that alone justifies its existence.
Its other main draw are the croissants, which also need about two or three minutes in the oven toaster (under a sheet of aluminum foil to prevent the top from burning). Both are not just as good, but better than the average baguette or croissant in Paris, though not as great as the very best you’d get in Paris.
The baguette and croissant are urban inventions. In France, bakers do an afternoon bake for people to take home to dinner, because the best baguettes shouldn’t last more than a few
Paul’s baguette hours. If they do last longer, it’s an ominous sign that preservatives have been added to keep