Lily Learns Spanish Through Food: Dinner Rolls sin comino (without cumin)
Everyone takes a different approach to learning new languages. I honestly have taken many approaches to learning Spanish from forced classes in school (we had a high Mexican population so they thought everyone should know Spanish. Despite their efforts...no one knew Spanish) to phone apps to most recently through my cookbooks. In a way, my life here is a practice in Spanish that can be pretty interesting to say the least. I give you my next Spanish lesson, these super tasty rolls made with a tang zhong starter.
I ended up changing the recipe because I didn't have the same types of flour and I didn't want to add cumin to the dough, keeping the flavor simple. I'll try them with the cumin next time to see how those are, perhaps with chili or something.
What you need (my translation and what I subsituted)
Tang Zhong
40g flour
200g water
Dough:
Flour 420 g
Wheat Flour 125 g
milk 120 g
1 egg
butter 80
brown sugar 65 g
7 grams yeast
6 g salt
egg for egg wash brushing before baking
It all starts with the Tang Zhong, something developed by the Japanese to produce soft spongy breads that last longer without preservatives.
You need at least 4 times as much water or liquid as flour for this, heated to exactly 149 degrees fahrenheit...I'm not kidding, it's gotta hit that exactly. You can easily burn this if you don't watch it closely and stir constantly.
It turns into something like this. Set it aside to cool completely.
Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, that is the flours and sugar.
Get the yeast going in a separate bowl with a little warm water.
I used brown sugar but I think the sugar is honestly negotiable.
Add the rest of the ingredients save for the butter.
Milk and egg measured out.
Mix until it makes a dough like this, then work on adding small amounts of flour and kneading it into a well formed smooth ball.
Damn fly on the dough, but it should look something like this minus the fly.
You want room temperature butter. It's hot as hell here right now so room temperature does this to butter.
Then just knead it into the dough. It'll act like they don't want to mix, just be persistent. It'll also feel a bit stickier, don't add flour, just keep mixing.
It looked like this after.
Allow to rise for about an hour.
Then section into 80-90 gram balls, arranging them close together.
Allow those to rise until doubled in size.
It should look like this.
Beat an egg and brush it on if you're interested in the shiny coating.
Cook for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees fahrenheit.
These were awesome, for sure worth making again and sharing with all of you. I'll make them with cumin soon to try that flavor profile.
Check out some of my other recent Steemit Originals!
Cobalt Blue Fumed Spoon Pipe with White Stringer Details
The Shelf From Hell, Firing our Compadre...Again
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They look really nice! I love pull apart bread. It's so great to share tasty food with people. :)
Thats a great idea of a way to learn spanish!
I thought you might be teaching us steemians spanish in your recipes too. That sounds like a great idea too.
That's part of why I post the pages I use.
yea I saw that, just thought maybe each sentence would have a spanish version and english version. Its still a great idea how to learn spanish though if you like to cook.
I always suggest people learning spanish read books relevant to their lives to learn it. Like farming books ect
Agree!
Relevance makes learning so much easier and more real!
Wow that bread looks delish! I never heard of Tong Zhang before. I would like to try it one of these days. The pictures came out nice too. Getting better and better!
This was my first experience with a tang zhong too but I'm intrigued honestly.
I thought you were going to cook something Spanish but then I saw you were cooking from a Spanish cookbook ;)
I often say the best way to learn a language is by learning their culture and food is a big big part of a culture.
Have you made (Colombian) arepa's before?
Nope, what are they? I've found the same to be true, living in the culture and eating their food is the best way to pick up the language.
They're are like the Mexican tortilla or Italian bread.
Check this site for a good explanation and tons of different variations and recipes: http://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/what-are-arepas
Those are called sopas here haha
Sopas? Meaning ' soups'... never heard of that term for arepas haha... throughout whole south america they're called arepa's :)
Sorry, its actually sopes. Such similar words.
I have been considering to learn spanish aswell.
This is interresting. Thanks for sharing this information.
Yep, immersion and books that relate to your life haha
@lily-da-vine
Making homemade dinner rolls can take a little time - most of the time spent waiting for the dough to rise - but the actual work is very easy. Whether you want your traditional dinner roll, whole wheat rolls, or to mix it up with rosemary and brie, we have you covered.