So I heard that my favourite local bread, the Pan de Sal has been losing some weight in the past years . . . ?
[Above: Pandesal with other yummy panaderia delights from Laguna courtesy of Philippine Star's | Allure | Bum Tenorio.]
Pan de Sal is the most popular yeast-raised bread in the Philippines. They are shaped like garrison caps due to its unique method of forming. The dough is rolled into long logs (baston) that are rolled in fine bread crumbs first before being cut into individual portions with a dull dough cutter and then allowed to rise and baked on sheet pans.
Its taste and texture closely resemble those of the very popular rolls of the Dominican Republic called Pan de Agua and Mexico’s most popular type of bread Bolillos for the reason that they all use a lean type of dough and follow similar techniques that were learned from Spanish or Spanish trained bakers early in their history.
As in most commercially produced food items, they vary in quality to meet taste requirements and economic standards of various communities in the Philippines where there are bakers in particular cities and towns that simply produce better quality Pan de sal such as in certain towns of Pampanga and Bulacan so that they command higher price, gain renown and their pan de sal sought after by consumers all over the region.
Pan de sal originally started out as a lean roll, traditionally served for breakfast to the accompaniment of other breakfast items such as butter, cheese, various filled scrambled egg or omelets, sausages, bacon, spanish sardines, jams, jellies and marmalades, coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Since it was a lean type of bread, the only ingredients needed were hard wheat flour, water, yeast and salt no different from those used and required by French law for good quality French baguette.
In fact, pan de sal from the nineteen fifties in my home town looked like chunky petite baguettes. Over the years, to compensate for the declining quality of wheat flour available that could no longer result in the ideal crusty exterior and strong resistant interior, pan de sal underwent a transformation into gradually sweeter and richer type of bread. The common quality though that the old style lean pan de sal shares with the modern sweeter version is its coating of bread crumbs which actually now provides its identifying flavour. You can bake pan de sal practically out of any type of dough and still come out with something resembling pan de sal as long as you roll the formed uncooked dough pieces in fine breadcrumbs. The softness of the new type of pan de sal that unaware consumers have finally come to find desirable is actually due mostly to its weak dough structure derived from inferior quality of flour used.
Pan de sal (or pandesal; literally, salt bread) is a staple of Filipino breakfast. It is a bread made of flour, eggs, lard, yeast, sugar, and salt. It has a soft, powdery texture and can be prepared in a number of ways by using numerous sandwich spreads. It is also used for dipping into tsokolate (from Spanish chocolate), a Spanish chocolate drink very much like hot chocolate but with pure cocoa as its main ingredient. Despite the literal meaning of its name, the taste of pan de sal varies from bland to slightly sweet.
Source: Wikipedia
Now, here’s an interesting piece of information I received in the email yesterday about my favourite bread, the Pan de Sal, losing weight!
PRESS STATEMENT
Former Senator Ernesto F. Herrera,
Secretary-General, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP)
2/F Marbella II Bldg., 2071 Roxas Blvd., Malate, Manila
Telephone: +63-2-526-0805October 2, 2006
PAN DE SAL’S WEIGHT DOWN 30 PERCENT IN 3 YEARS
Pan de Sal, the favorite Filipino breakfast paired with coffee, has lost 30 percent of its weight in the last three years, in what could be a sign of the economically difficult times, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said.
The pan de sal’s apparent diminution over the years could also be indicative of the extent consumers are losing value for their money in the face of surging inflation, according to former senator and TUCP Secretary-General Ernesto Herrera.
Herrera made the statement shortly after bakers “officially” further reduced the weight of the P2-pan de sal by 12.5 percent, from 40 grams to just 35 grams a piece.
The former senator said the action implied that the indicative weight of the smaller P1 pan de sal, which Malacañang pegged at 25 grams in 2003, could now be down to as little as 17.5 grams.
Owing to the increasing cost of flour and liquefied petroleum or cooking gas, bakers said they had no choice but to further lessen the mass of the P2-pan de sal in order to keep margins.
Malacañang set the price of the 25-gram pan de sal at P1 each, or P2 for the heavier 50-gram version, in April 2003, through “Pinoy Pan de Sal,” a joint project of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Philippine Federation of Bakers Association Inc. (PFBAI).
The project guaranteed a 25-gram weight per piece of the P1-pan de sal through the use of a cheaper flour mix known as “Harina de Pan de Sal,” specially reformulated by San Miguel Corporation.
The project also guaranteed that “Pinoy Pan de Sal” would be enriched with vitamin A and iodized salt, and kept bromate-free.
However, Herrera said the DTI and the PFBAI “apparently failed to sustain the project in the face of the global surge in commodity prices, from wheat to crude oil.”
“Obviously, they were not able to keep the project up. There is no P1-pan de sal now that weighs 25 grams,” he lamented. Herrera described as “ill-timed” the bakers’ decision to further lessen the pan de sal’s heaviness.
“Cooking gas prices have already gone down considerably as a result of the global plunge in oil prices, and it is now much cheaper to buy dollars with pesos,” he pointed out.
Philippine flour comes from spring wheat that is 100-percent imported from the United States, Australia, Canada and China, and thus paid for in dollars.
Herrera previously warned of “stealth inflation,” or indirect consumer price increases through subtle “content reduction.” He then described “stealth inflation” as the type that is not indicated via actual price increases, but through “less discernible cutbacks in the quantity or volume of the commodity for which one is paying the same price as before.”
Lucky are these pan de sals though. They need not exert extra effort in losing some unwanted load like most human beings, or overweight Pinoys would! But, would this mean an additional piece or two for me to pack-in every morning on top of my usual six?!
Technorati Tags: pinoy, filipino, food, pandesal, bread, flour, milk, yeast, salt, bakery, panaderia
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