Kulinarya Extra – Pandesal

Okay, so, to be completely honest, I’ve missed the deadline for this month’s Kulinarya challenge. I do have ideas about what I want to do for it, and technically, it’s not August yet, so I still have time to at least cook something, even if I don’t blog about it. So instead, I’m reaching into the photo archives to talk about pandesal, or Filipino bread rolls.

Technically, pandesal means “salt bread”, but these rolls are some of the sweetest and softest breads you’ll ever taste. They are eaten at any time of day, plain, with any kind of filling, or used to mop up any kind of sauce you like. Personally, I think the optimal way to eat pandesal is split open and toasted with cheese – and to tell the truth, the worse the cheese, the better! This is probably the only time I’d voluntarily buy Kraft single slices over our normal vintage cheddar. In the Philippines, I’d spread them with matamis na bao (coconut jam), or just dip them in coffee.

I tried several recipes before finally settling on this one from Food.com (formerly Recipezaar – did anyone else notice the changeover? I still feel like I’m looking at the wrong site!). Of course, I’ve adapted it for my stand mixer, but all you’re really doing is using a machine to knead the bread for you.

You need:

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons softened butter
1 tablespoon oil
500 grams all-purpose flour (4 cups)
3 teaspoons yeast
breadcrumbs (for topping)

The standard procedure for making bread is:

Mix dry ingredients (flour, salt, yeast) plus sugar
Add fats (egg, butter, oil)
Mix wet ingredients (milks, water) and warm slightly – I microwaved them for 45 seconds before adding them.
Knead for at least 15 minutes.

This particular recipe makes a very wet dough, depending on the weather I might need to add up to an extra half-cup of flour just to get it looking like dough instead of batter. Don’t expect it to clean the sides of bowl like a normal bread dough, just get it so your fingers don’t feel too wet when you touch it.

You can see the dough clinging to the hook in the top-left picture.

Scrape it all down and plop it as best you can into a greased bowl, then roll it about so the dough lump is greased all over.

If it’s a pretty warm day (over 20C), just cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave it on the counter for about an hour, or even less time if the weather’s actually hot. If it’s colder, cover the bowl with cling wrap and boil a full kettle of water. Set the bowl in a cold oven (ie: don’t turn it on!), and set a pan underneath the bowl. Pour the hot water into the pan, and close the oven to let the heat from the water keep the dough warm. In either case, you want the dough to double in size.

If you’ve made bread before, you’ll have noticed the much larger amount of both yeast and sugar. This means a reliably fast rise for the pandesal, resulting in a very soft crumb.

See the texture of the dough in the bottom picture? That’s gluten, baby! It’s what gives bread its body and structure, which makes it chewy and filling.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. It will still be a bit sticky, but don’t be scared to dust more flour over it to stop it sticking to everything. You want it to feel just slightly tacky. Knead it about a bit, and roll it into a large ball.

Since I make pandesal for my family, I want to make sure every single roll is as even (and fair!) as possible, so I weigh the final dough ball, and split it into 16 rolls (halves, quarters, eights, and then sixteenths). Make each roll slightly rectangular (instead of a ball), and put them aside.

While the dough was rising, prepare your breadcrumbs. I normally only have panko breadcrumbs, so I grind them up finely in the mortar and pestle. You could probably skip the breadcrumbs altogether, but it’s a traditional thing. My theory is that there was a lazy Filipino baker who rolled their pandesal out on a bench which was covered in old breadcrumbs, and didn’t want to waste perfectly good bread, and didn’t bother to clean them off. The breadcrumbs add a bit of texture contrast, but basically just… make pandesal look like pandesal.

Spread your rolls out on baking trays so there’s a couple of centimetres between each roll. You want them to wind up touching just slightly after they do their second rise.

Either dip the tops of each roll into the breadcrumbs, or sprinkle them across the top and pat them down slightly.

Let the rolls rise for another hour or so – you can use the same steaming trick if needed, but make sure the cling wrap is very loose over the top of the rolls.

When they’ve doubled in size again (and should be touching ever so slightly!), pre-heat the oven to 200C and bake for 10-15 minutes. When they’re done, make sure you flip them upside down so the bottoms don’t get soggy as they cool.

Oh, and yes – the picture above shows a triple batch. One for Redfort, one for my parents, and one for my parents’ friends that we were were visiting. To be honest though, it doesn’t take much more time to make bread in bulk than to make a single batch.

There really is… nothing more to say, is there? Mmm. And the verdict from the family? Well, considering that my father actually calls me up to make sure I’m bringing them whenever I go over to their house, and my mother brags about them to her friends, I’d say this is one of my proudest kitchen successes.