炊飯 ジャぱん (ジャぱん #2)
So, here’s that bread that was stalking my twitter earlier this week. You can indeed make BREAD in a RICE COOKER. HOWEVER, it takes much patience due to the max temperature of said appliance. Like5 hours…
But let me relate to you WHERE this recipe came from and why the rice cooker. This is from an ANIME that is about BREAD (pan/ぱん). 「焼きたてジャぱん！」 /”Yakitate Japan!” to be precise which translates to “Freshly Baked JaPAN” which is a pun for bread representing Japan …because of the “pan” part which is “bread” in Japanese…. 
The show is FULL of lame jokes and TONSSSSSS of PUNNNNNNNNNS. And it’s my absolute FAVORITE show of anything animated. Pure crack. You should probably watch it…now. ASIDE, it’s about a boy who’s goal is to make a bread that represents Japan and could be eaten as a main staple instead of RICE. Azuma Kazuma is his name and he hails from the countryside without any proper schooling in baking and thus all his creations are named “Japan #something”. This one being Japan #2. And that is the history and whatnot of this bread…
Anyways, onto the process!
Firstly, the recipe. I had to convert the recipe onto ounces since my scale only reads that (the original is in metric). It is BEST for non-metric utensiled cooks to use a scale to get the closest accurate measurement. CRUCIAL to cooking, please take the time to measure correctly! (original recipe taken from this translation)
- Bread flour 12.3 oz
- Butter .7 oz
- Sugar .7 oz
- Milk 35 ml
- Water 180 ml
- Dry Yeast .18 oz
- Table salt .23 oz
Again, if you have an electric scale (I have a USPS one… 
), please use it and try NOT to round if possible. If anyone really is going to try this, the part about the YEAST is kind of vague so I’ll tell you two options: add more water to the yeast and save the 180 ml for the recipe OR take some water from the 180 ml and add it to the yeast. I did the latter and it turned out fine. I’m going to try the prior when I make this again.
So I’ll truncate the recipe here: Mix bread flour, sugar & salt together in rice cooker bowl/pot. Dissolve the yeast in water. Add water, milk & yeast mixture to dry ingredients and mix well. Mix/knead until the dough comes together and doesn’t feel flour-y (if there’s some flour that won’t stick, it’s ok.). Once that is accomplished, add butter to the dough and knead it through until incorporated. This will make the dough a but moist and you can now pick up all the flour and crumbs in the pot. Knead until the dough is no longer sticky.
Place in a warm place for 1 hour (first fermentation). Remove from pot, remove excess gas by droppping the dough from about 1.5 ft high onto a counter and replace in rice cooker pot. Replace in warm place for another hour (second fermentation). Once the hour is up, set in machine and bake/fire/cook for 1 hour. Flip over and then cook for another hour. And finally, flip once more and cook for the final hour. All in all, 15-20 minutes to prep dough, 2 hours to ferment, 3 hours to cook. 5.5 hours for this… 
Your rice cooker should have a timer function…I’m not sure how well this works with a non-timer rice cooker so sorry I can’t offer alterneratives for that! The following are some snaps while in progress. It’s a pretty delicious pan with a pretty simple recipe. The end result was a FLUFFY mellow bread with a thin crust and sooooooooooft crumb. Gonna try a honey pan recipe next…
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- First fermentation.
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- Second fermentation.
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- After first fire/cooking hour.
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- Flipped, second fire/cooking hour.
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- YAKITATE JAPAN!
Long Time No See
Wow so it’s really been a WHILE, eh? I’ve missed you all my lovely interwebbies. Alas, my computer’s interweb is borked and I am quite annoyed. Also, it feels kind of weird typing on a keyboard, it’s been a WHILE! I’ve gotten used to typing with my thumbs on my phone now…hahahaa.
For those I have not formally informed, I’m online due to my iPhone, purchased quite a few weeks ago. Things like IM and twitter are a bit slow due to the connectivity (depending on where I am, like at work where I have some supershit connectivity). Anyway, for some reason or other, I can’t blog on my phone…something about the textbox not working. Could have something to do with the JS on this thing? Whatever. I can enter titles but that’s about it.
Hnn what else? A few things have happened since the last post…actually quite a few things. I suppose I’ll start with what I can remember earliest which was Tomato’s mum’s visit. Twas lots of fun 
We managed to get in a lot of activities despite me having to work Saturday morning. We had dinner at Dakota, managed to swing by a jazz festival in the park, played at Six Flags New England (which is surprisingly CLOSE to us?!), hung out, relaxed and played cards. Went grocery shopping too 
It was great to see the MiL again along with her SiL, SiL’s daughter and her daughter. They’re a hilarious bunch.
The cats were just getting used to them and then they had to leave! Nyuu! Anyways, the kitties are doing well. Toilet-training them is rather tedious but we have them going in a liner on the toilet 
We just have to get their posture right and then start weening them off the liner completely. SO CLOSE!!!!! Currently, they’re enjoying the summer by sleeping everywhere….literally. At this very instance, Zilla is snoozing on the coffee table next to me while Apple is…sitting under the desk in the bedroom…staring at the mattress…?? Whatever floats his boat 
Work-wise, we just got through and intense weekend. Super busy all day Thursday and Friday. Friday we hosted the pre-concert party for Green Day’s gig down the street at the XL Center. Awesome much? WCCC Rock (radio station) came out to do contests and ticket giveaways and whatnot. Place was PACKED. We had people stealing tables and whatnot. Insanity!! Super awesome though. I made like $400 (just tips) in two days worth of work that I did all week!! Awesomeness.
Saturday was decent lunch-wise. Had a few tables to handle by myself. Wish there was a hostess to at least seat people and keep an eye on the front while I had to run around the kitchen and whatnot. Whatever. Decent tips for only a few tables 
Also, this upcoming weekend is Connecticon and I’ve been advertising on their forums. Being a Japanese restaurant, we’re totally trying to cater to this crowd. We’re expecting a huge turnout. Hopefully Hope it’s SUPER SUPER BUSY!!! MAKE ME SOME MONIIIIIIIIIIIIES!!
Yesterday, we both had some maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad cravings for Bob Evans breakfast stuffs but alas the closest BE is in NY?! WHUT? Yeap. So we managed to gorge ourselfs at the closest IHOP. I had a Benadryl earlier in the morning and was feeling sooo out of it the whole day. Tomato even let me have coffee!! A WHOLE CARAFE! And that didn’t do anything…but maybe because it was decaf? Whatever. Huu, other than that, we watched The Duchess last night. Fairly amusing, pretty intense, sucks to be in that situation though. Anyways, pretty decent drama. The clothes were amazing…along with the large….LARGE HAIR.
Hnn that’s about it. Today’s agenda includes cleaning the bathroom, possibly the kitchen and folding the laundry we did last night. Eyebrows need to be reshaped too so off to the mall for threading. Really wanna get some clothes but alas! I just paid some heavy bills so no monies until I pick up my check tomorrow…(I always forget to grab it at work. DAMN!).
Well time to go clean and stop stalling. Until next time…or something to that extent…later.
Jen & Tom Watch Beck Day
For reasons unknown, we never do anything on Saturdays…even though we plan all our cleaning for that day. All of it gets done on SUNDAY! SO, we spent most of yesterday finishing Super Rookie and we’ve started Beck M.C.S. today. We’ve already done 8/26 episodes already!! 
The eps are a little under 30 minutes (but even less minus the opening, ending and lil blurb between for the commercial). Oh man, at this point, we’ll be plowing through series on the weekends!! Please make any suggestions for series we can check out (dorama, anime). We’re somewhat looking for FOOD series like Ne Ireum Eun SamSoon, Yakitate!! Japan, Lunch Queen and the like. Though we’ll be interested in almost anything!!
Other than that….yeah. It’s basically how we spend our free time these days, most recently anyways. We’re on the dorama + anime line again. It’s as close as we can get to “watching TV”.
Anyways, got some chores to do tomorrow so gonna turn in early 
We already got groceries & some cat litter today. We got it out of the way early…so we could watch copious amounts of anime 
Other than that…yeah. Not much to say really 
PS: SHOUT OUT TO GENEVIEVE FOR INTRODUCING ME TO CHOCOLAT & JAYNEJAYNE FOR INTRODUCING ME TO THE EXQUISITE DISQUS & KIKKI-K!! LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE 
