♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, the wide, wide world of bread is so much more interesting than some of the classic recipes here in the States.

Semolina breads, pide bread from Turkey, flatbreads, of course.

So today we're going to look at three recipes.

We're going to start with one of my favorites, Brazilian cheese puffs Guess what, you just throw everything in a blender and then you bake it off in a mini muffin tin.

Secondly, a German seeded rye bread which has flax seeds, it has pumpkin seeds, etcetera.

It's really, really terrific.

It's a classic in Germany and as well as Austria.

And finally, we're going to Hawaii for butter rolls, which became very popular after World War II.

They have butter in them, but they taste great.

So stay tuned as we take a fresh look at breads around the world.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So here's the problem.

The problem is I'm going to have a glass of wine, invite a couple people over-- or maybe not.

And what am I going to serve with the wine, right?

So the cheese plate?

I'm sorry, that's boring.

So here's what I do want.

I want something small, I want something light, I want something different, and something maybe that comes right out of the oven.

These are cheese puffs from Brazil and these are absolutely fabulous.

You just throw everything in a blender.

You throw that in one of these little mini muffin tins.

They're light, a little bit of cheese flavor to it, they're great.

First thing is this is made with tapioca starch, okay?

Or sometimes it's called tapioca flour.

And we actually bake some with all-purpose flour.

And this is what you get.

They don't rise properly, they're kind of heavy.

And the tapioca flour does a few things.

It gets a nice gloss and sheen to the outside.

You get more rise to it, they puff up better.

Gives it some chew.

And that's because there's amylopectin and amylose in it.

Those are two types of starch.

The amylopectin, well, it kind of looks like a tree in winter with the branches.

And the amylose looks like a slinky.

You pull like this, so it's a long chain.

So amylopectin really helps in providing structure and getting that chewiness to it.

So the tapioca starch is really great.

So put that in the blender.

And now the cheese-- in Brazil, they use this-- queijo minas curado-- and it's this cheese here.

Little bite.

Pretty good.

you probably aren't going to find that here.

So asiago works really well.

I like asiago because it feels or tastes a little saltier.

It's a little sharper than this, which I like.

Or gruyere would be the other thing you could try.

So asiago, so put that in.

One egg.

Milk.

Vegetable oil, this is not olive oil.

Mustard powder.

Put that in.

And here we go.

You know, this mixer looks like something my mother had back in the 1950s.

This is not state of the art, but it did a good job.

Now we're going to fill this... three-quarter-plus full.

They're going to puff up really nicely.

It's a little unusual to make something in the blender, although there are many recipes in Mexico like corn cake that you do in the blender as well.

There's no gluten in here, it's all starch.

So you don't have to worry about working the gluten and getting something tough.

This is always the point when I get nervous, like, am I gonna have enough?

And I think I am.

Look at that!

That was perfect.

Into a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

They're going to puff up, they're going to get brown.

I always take one out and eat it, just to make sure it's okay.

♪ ♪ Okay, they puffed.

Now let's take a look.

So here's the all-purpose flour one, here's the tapioca starch one.

So you can tell that it makes a huge difference.

What I really like about these is that amylopectin in particular gives you a kind of a chewy texture, which I really like, and a nice glossy outside.

So you get crisp on the outside, glossy on the outside, and you get chewy on the inside, which is perfect.

Mm.

I actually make these twice a month just for my kids because they really like 'em.

So the next time you're going to open a bottle of wine and you don't want the cheese, you don't want the crackers and you don't want the smorgasbord of hors d'oeuvres, you don't want to really fill yourself up, the Brazilian cheese puffs, they're really nice, they're warm, they're small, they're bite-size.

Now I'm also a fan of gougère, and I went to Paris not too long ago.

There's a guy I know, actually he owns a bakery in, in the Belleville section of Paris, and he makes giant gougères, which are really great too, so we're going to take a little trip to Paris and get a lesson in making giant gougère.

♪ ♪ - My name is Edward Delling-Williams.

I have a restaurant here in Paris called Le Grand Bain, a bakery here in Paris called Le Petit Grain.

And now I live in Normandy where I have a farm called the Farm and a restaurant, or a pub, called The Presbytère.

I left home when I was about 14, moved into this local pub where I would go to school in the mornings and then come home and work in the evenings.

We would make big tarts or big cakes.

We would make our own bread.

The fact that I started young and the fact I had started in one of these places where we, where we did everything from scratch was what gave me a really good standing to be a good chef and then really, like, love food.

And I love all food.

(chuckles) I have, like, a thing with baked goods, like breads-- I don't like sourdough with loads of air holes in them.

I like it, like, a crumb, full crumb, and same for, like, the gougère.

I like to have it rise a little bit, but I like it to be a little bit gooey on the inside.

We start off by bringing up milk, water, and butter up to the boil in a pan and then add the flour.

You really want to make sure that when you're cooking a gougère that you cook it enough in the pan before you transfer it to the mixer.

Once that's got kind of like a Play-Doh and fully incorporated texture, we take our eggs.

What I like to do is beat all of the eggs together and then add, like, an egg's worth to the, to the mixture and let that paddle together, mix together until it's fully incorporated.

Whilst that's happening, I can grate some cheese.

Normally gruyere, but you could use Comte or any other hard cheese.

You can easily mix that cheese in by hand so it's all well incorporated.

I put it into a little pot or little box and pop it in the fridge.

You can do it and put it in a piping bag and pipe them and then do a smaller, smaller little ball.

And if you do it like that, it's going to rise quicker because the air pockets inside are getting hotter.

It's going to get this nice rise and you're going to end up with the traditional gougère that you can cut a little hole in and let the air come out.

But I like to not have that, I like to have something that's got a little bit more substance to it, a little bit more punch in the mouth.

The goal is to have something that rises but isn't an empty space inside, and then eat them straight out of the oven.

It's not going to be like crisp like toast, but it's going to be, there's going to be a crispy aspect to it.

And then on the inside, yeah, a little bit, not custardy, but just like soft, like, more like a madeleine.

Hearkening back to when I was a child and you have those, like, fried mozzarella sticks or something like this, and they were, like, the best thing ever.

Someone said, here's cheese, but it's melted.

Then you're like, "What?

This is delicious!"

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - I just got back from a couple weeks in Germany.

I was traveling in Frankfurt and Berlin, and in between, well, beer, brats, and sauerkraut, my three favorite food groups, I ate a lot of bread.

Bread in Germany is often full of seeds.

It's crusted, it's multigrain.

It's really, really delicious on many different fronts.

What we're going to make today is a version of a rye bread, a seeded rye bread called vollkornbrot.

If you've ever been intimidated by kneading, you don't do it here.

There's nothing to do here.

It does take some time, though.

So this starts with both a pre-ferment and a soaker.

Now let's start with the pre-ferment.

We're going to soak our flour in a liquid with some of the yeast that goes into the bread.

And what we're doing is we're starting the bread process, we're starting the gluten formation.

And that long, slow gluten formation is going to build a very stable dough that's going to have great texture.

We're also building flavor by letting it soak overnight, starting the fermentation process.

We don't really think of bread being like sauerkraut or miso, these great fermented products, but it is a fermented product.

So we're building the glutamates, we're building the flavor enhancements that add a ton of flavor.

Pre-ferments are generally just yeast, flour and water.

In this case, we're going to start us off with buttermilk.

So buttermilk is going to add some acidity, which is going to tenderize some of this dough.

It's going to add flavor and depth, so half-a-cup of all-purpose flour.

Now you're gonna think, I'm using all-purpose flour for my bread?

Remember, we're not kneading this, this is not a gluten-heavy dough.

It's not something we want to develop a ton of chewiness.

And then a half-teaspoon of yeast.

The yeast is gonna start that fermentation.

It's gonna feed off the flour, build the complexity of the flavor and help start that structure.

So once that's blended, you want to cover it and you want to refrigerate it for 12 to 24 hours.

So we have our pre-ferment.

Now we're going to do what we call a soaker.

It's just that: we're going to soak our grains in a liquid and it's going to soften the grains, and again, it's going to help start that fermentation.

Most grains are going to start to ferment when soaked like this.

This type of bread is normally done with rye chops.

Rye chops are rye berries that are cracked or cut so they hydrate and are a little more palatable to eat.

Rye chops aren't the easiest thing to find.

So we've tried a whole bunch of different grains and found that pearled farro actually is great in this bread.

It's going to hydrate in that 12-hour overnight soak and be really, really pleasant to eat in that bread.

So we're gonna add our half-cup of pearled farro to bowl and we're gonna measure out a half-cup of beer here.

We're gonna use a hefeweizen.

Now hefeweizen is a wheat-style German beer.

Hopefully, there's some left for me.

Tastes like Germany.

Doesn't look like much yet.

But I promise you it's gonna pay off.

So I'm going to cover these in plastic wrap, throw them in the fridge and they're going to sit overnight for 12 hours.

That pre-ferment has done something.

It's alive, it's actually bubbling away.

I love it.

You can smell it.

The aroma has really changed.

You can smell that fermentation happening.

So let's finish making our bread.

To our pre-ferment, we're going to add two-and-a-half cups rye flour.

And we're gonna add another half-cup of all-purpose flour.

Here comes our soaker.

It's amazing how much liquid that pearled farro absorbed overnight.

We're gonna add that in all the beer and everything else 'cause we want all that flavor.

We're gonna add a half-teaspoon more yeast.

We added half a teaspoon to start, we're gonna add another fresh half-teaspoon.

One-and-a-half teaspoon salt.

Gonna give this a little stir to blend it.

Now comes the fun part.

So many German breads are loaded with seeds, nuts, all sorts of stuff, and it's one of the reasons I love them.

The flavor and texture stays interesting, start to finish-- we're gonna add one tablespoon of flaxseed, One tablespoon of pumpkin seeds.

And one tablespoon sesame seeds.

Mix that in, and then we're gonna add a half-cup of warm water.

Now, if I was making a standard bread, I would take this out and knead it.

But we're not kneading.

You don't need a stand mixer.

You're not going to stand here for 15 minutes working this really sticky dough and want to scream halfway through.

We're done.

So we're going to cover it at this point.

Just throw plastic wrap or a towel over top.

And leave it until it's doubled, about an hour-and-a-half to two hours.

It's been a hair under two hours, and we have this beautiful double dough.

So at this point, we're gonna turn it into our loaf pan.

And this is one of those things I really dislike about making loaf bread-- I never know quite how to fold it.

You know, there's all this origami with folding loaves.

There's none of that here.

It's really simple, we're just gonna turn it into the pan.

There's no shaping.

I love this-- love it.

Just going to pack it down.

Spread it to the corners.

And all those reserved seeds are now going to go on top.

So at this point, after we gently pack those seeds on, we're gonna wait for the dough to dome a bit.

It takes about 40 minutes.

So it's been 40 minutes.

The dough has clearly risen enough.

The loaf is gonna go on in a 400 degree oven, middle rack, for 60 to 70 minutes.

It seems like a really long bake time at a very high temperature, but this bread really needs to cook through.

♪ ♪ I pulled it from the oven at 70 minutes.

I turned it over so the crust doesn't steam too much and let it cool two hours.

This bread looks gorgeous.

It looks exactly like everything I ate in Berlin and Frankfurt a couple weeks ago.

Let me cut a few slices here.

It's very... ...dense, which I love.

Oh, that's great, you can see that cross-section.

That's a dense crumb, it's very moist though, because that buttermilk and the beer.

A loaf will last for a week without staling.

My favorite piece is the end piece.

So I'm going to go back, I'm going to grab that end piece.

I'm going to build a little open-face sandwich here.

So when I was a kid, one of the things we did on New Year's Eve that I absolutely loved was we would have vollkornbrot with smoked trout.

So I'm gonna have some vollkornbrot here with smoked salmon-- close enough.

I'm gonna take a lot of smoked salmon, apparently.

It's great savory, it's also great sweet.

I love it with cream cheese and jams, butter.

But let me go ahead and dig in here.

Mm.

There's remarkable complexity to this bread.

It's got the seeds, it's got the spiciness and the flavors inherent to that Hefeweizen.

I think of this as a great gateway to baking.

It's so easy, you should give it a whirl at home.

This is the original no-knead bread.

It could not be easier to make, and it's got that great flavor, great texture, it keeps well.

It hits on every level.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hello, Milk Street.

My name is Roxana Jullapat, and here is a lesson on baking with whole grains.

So in my experience and the experience of many bakers, breadmaking is the perfect stage for whole grain baking.

And, of course, is a really, really good way to get acquainted with new grains.

So one of my favorite whole grain flours for sure is buckwheat.

It was, like, love at first sight.

And the reason why, I think is because it really is one of those whole grain flours that is so, so omnipresent.

Lik, there is no doubt when you taste a recipe with buckwheat that there's buckwheat in it.

You will find that it has, like, sort of floral and rosy flavors, but it also sometimes is very grounding and it almost tastes like how a garden would smell after the rain.

It definitely has a very well-rounded flavor profile, always leaning on the dark side.

One of the main advantages of using buckwheat is that it is 100% completely safe, gluten-free flour.

When I was coming up with my own mix for a gluten-free flour, I knew right away that that was the one flour that I was going to use, not only for flavor and color, but also because it does have this characteristic that I really love.

If you were to add water to buckwheat, you'll soon realize it starts to develop a little bit of a sliminess, not unlike, say, gluten, right?

When we develop gluten, it gives you a little bit of elasticity.

The second flour that I added was brown rice flour.

The reason why is because it adds a lot of starch.

And last I added some oat flour.

And this is for softness.

So all that did kind of like a perfect balance where each grain played a role and added something beneficial to the gluten-free baking.

♪ ♪ - My name is Royce Tanaka and we are just outside of Fresno, California.

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents.

My grandfather's name is Masao Teruya.

He was a cook in the Army.

After World War II, he went to school and he opened up a bakery.

You know, he had baker's hours, 2:00 A.M.

to 2:00 P.M.

I guess that's what it is about, you know, these first, second generation-- they sacrifice, they work hard so the next generation can do better by getting college degrees.

But it's sad for me because, you know, in some ways, like, oh, but we don't have these baked goods anymore.

And one of my favorite things is these butter rolls that he would make.

I remember as a kid, my mom would help out in the bakery on the weekends and I'd be in the parking lot sleeping in the car.

And then I would wake up in the morning and then I would walk in and I remember grabbing the butter roll, you know, and then putting more butter on it.

I mean, those things are so good.

I've never seen it anywhere else.

It was really soft inside.

It seemed almost layered.

In some ways, these things really connected me back to my grandparents who are deceased and even my dad.

And, yeah, I would love to recreate this recipe.

♪ ♪ - Royce Tanaka of California wanted us to recreate his grandfather's butter rolls that he made in his Hawaiian bakery.

So some of the things he wanted us to highlight for these rolls were the soft interior, the yellowish hue, and, of course, he wanted them to taste like butter.

And so did we.

So here's how we developed this recipe.

First, we start with some water.

Of course, we have butter-- what we had to try and figure out was how much butter to add.

If you add too much butter, the rolls would have been kind of soggy.

So we added some shortening, and that kind of gave them a little lightness.

We also added milk.

And some sugar.

So we're gonna heat this in a microwave until the butter and the shortening is melted.

And then we're gonna let it cool so that it's just warm when we add it to our flour.

In this mixer, I have five cups of all-purpose flour, a tablespoon of instant yeast, a teaspoon of salt.

I'm just going to run this for a minute.

And on low, I'm going to add our milk, butter, shortening mixture.

So I'm going to run this on low for about seven to nine minutes, until the dough is shiny and smooth and elastic.

Even if you think the dough might be done earlier than that, try and let it go for at least the seven minutes, because that's how the gluten develops, and that will give you nice, fluffy rolls.

♪ ♪ Okay, so this has been about eight minutes.

And as you can see, it's pulled away from the side of the bowl.

And I didn't have to add any more flour to this.

If you felt like you wanted to add a little more if it was sticking, you can.

So we greased a bowl with a tablespoon of butter.

We're going to put it in that, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rise for about two hours until it doubles in size.

Royce talked about how the bottom of these rolls had a really caramelized crust.

So we found that putting that pat of butter at the bottom of the tin gave these a really caramelized bottom.

Trust me-- amazing.

Here's our dough.

It's doubled in size.

And so what I'm going to do now is... ...divide this into 12 pieces.

This is such a soft dough.

Royce talked about how you could peel the top off, so we tried a couple of different things.

We didn't want to do anything that was too difficult or too elaborate.

This really seemed to be the best way to do it.

So all we're going to do is take our piece of dough, flatten it into a rectangle that's about two inches by three inches.

And then we're just going to fold it in half and we're going to put it in the muffin tin with the folded edge towards the edge of the muffin tin.

♪ ♪ I do love making rolls, but it's usually a special occasion.

Just because they do have to rise.

I make more biscuits and scones because they're a little bit quicker, but there is nothing like a homemade roll, I will say that.

So they're all in.

We want them to rise for about 30 to 45 minutes.

They should come above the top of the muffin tin, and then we'll bake them off.

So these have been rising for 45 minutes.

Look at this!

If you press them, they'll spring back a little bit.

That's how you know they're done.

So now we're gonna bake them in a 400 degree oven on the lower middle rack for about 20 minutes until they're golden brown.

So, as you can see, it has this beautiful caramelized bottom.

And as Royce describes, you can peel off the top, which is nice and crispy.

They like to serve them with butter and jam, and so do I. These are so fluffy and buttery.

They would be delicious with a stew, a creamy soup.

It's definitely a great roll to have in your repertoire.

Thank you, Royce, for introducing us to these rolls, and now we can share them with you.

To find this recipe and all the recipes from this season, go to MilkStreetTV.com.

But before we go, we're going to check back in with Royce to see what his family thought of this recipe.

- Okay, all right.

- Whoa!

- So there's a napkin here, and everybody can grab one.

- Yeah, look, there's actually layers.

It looks the same.

I'll do my grandpa thing.

Like, feel it, examine it, smell it.

Most of us, when we taste the butter rolls, we just throw the whole thing in our mouth.

But my grandpa, he used to use all of his senses.

- And then he just takes a little bite.

- Yeah, just a little bite.

- I think the person who will have the most memory will be my aunt.

She was the one who watched my grandfather day in and day out for years.

I mean, I don't even know how many times she's seen my grandfather make this recipe.

- Here I go.

This needs more butter.

Almost like it, but, yeah, it's pretty good.

- Okay, thank you.

(laughs) More butter, believe it or not.

- You have a chance, you have potential.

- (laughs) - Surprisingly, he did well, it came out very good.

It tasted very familiar, like from days before.

(chuckles) - Tastes good.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- My first time doing it all on my own, and it actually turned out well, so I was shocked.

I'm really thankful for that.

- Royce, when I eat this, I feel there's lots of love.

- Oh, thank you.

- You made it with a lot of feelings.

- Yeah, it reminds me when, yeah, you know, watching Grandpa make these.

Like, I like that crispy right out of the top.

- Right, right.

- I miss my grandpa a lot.

I think he would be really proud, and I think he's looking down at us and saying, "Yeah, great job, Royce."

- So, I'm so glad that, that you and Anabel came at the last minute, Nicki, 'cause, like, we all grew up with the bakery, right-- she didn't.

So it's kind of exciting that she's here.

I'm so glad that you can share this and, you know, pass this on and kind of, like, Grandpa kind of lives on and the bakery and all that history and how the food kind of connects us and everything.

Grandniece, niece Nicki, my sister Janis, and my mom.

Four generations.

To me, that's also really neat.

You don't always get that, four generations all at one table.

Thank you, Grandpa, for bringing us all back together.

I'm so glad you're all here to experience this with me, thank you.

- Good job, Royce.

Good job, Royce.

- Yeah, thank you, Grandpa.

I'm definitely proud of my brother.

He's definitely going to be the one that's going to make the rolls for Thanksgiving dinner.

- It would be nice if there still was a bakery and somebody would have continued that.

But, you know, at least with the recreating of these butter rolls, there's a little bit of piece of that history.

There's a little piece of growing up that we can still get to hold onto.

- Good job, brother Royce.

- All right, I need more butter.

Excuse me.

- (laughs) ♪ ♪ - Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes and our tips and techniques library.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The season ten Milk Street Cookbook is now available, and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From Brazilian cheese puffs and French toast, to skillet lasagna and Japanese cheesecake, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of The Milk Street Cookbook for $34.95-- 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪