Monay (and Putok)

I have been dreading making monay because of the long kneading time. The characterisically dense and smooth dough is due to extended period of kneading after the rising time prior to cutting. In my father's bakery, we used to have a kneading machine with double rollers where you place the dough in between to press it, stretching and squeezing out bubbles in the process. The baker would do this several times until he was content with the dough's dense and smooth appearance. Pieces were cut to precise sizes (I did mine to have 3oz pieces). I have no such machine, and the dough is comparatively minute anyway, so i used my arm power with the help of the rolling pin. Maybe I will make this again, using the bigger, sliced loaf version, only during Christmas time for giveaways. I am posting here mainly for reference not only for me but for those who have been searching for a monay recipe.

I added yellow food coloring here because that was what the bakers used to do and I am just copying. The yellow coloring of monay makes it appear like it had lots of egg yolk, when I only added one (bakeries do not add yolks at all). I just made use of one egg yolk I had in the fridge from a previous baking stint. I figured it would not hurt to add that to the monay recipe I used. For putok, it should not have the food coloring nor the egg yolk. So to point out the difference between the two, PUTOK (1) has no food coloring, (2) has a crown instead of slit (made by cross-slits), (3) has milk glaze with sugar on the crown, and (4) is made more compact and denser by shorter final rising time. But since I never want to make big batches of rolls that will probably not get eaten within a week, I made only the dough for monay (with the food coloring and long rising time), and only made a couple pieces shaped and glazed/sugared as putok.

I based this recipe on a pan de sal recipe posted in allrecipes, after reading the comments there. I adjusted the amounts according to the amount of evap milk in a can, in replacement of the milk used in the recipe, which called for heating it up prior to actually using it (sort of reducing the milk). The comments said the resulting rolls were dense and hardly rose at all, and another mentioned that the high rating he gave was because it made for good monay and putok recipe. After making these, I do agree it is indeed a good monay recipe.

Ingredients:
1 (14-oz) can of evaporated milk
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp yellow food coloring (optional)
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup butter
1 (0.25 oz) package active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
4 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions:

Heat evap milk to 80-100 deg F. Melt butter. Combine sugar, melted butter, yellow food coloring, egg yolk and evap milk in the mixing bowl. Stir in yeast and let proof.

Meanwhile, measure and put together in a bowl the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and blend well.

On stir setting of the mixer, gradually add the flour (placed at the sides of the bowl) until all is used up. Stop when dough pulls together and leaves only a small amount of flour at the sides of the bowl. Transfer to a lightly greased and lightly floured surface.

Knead for about 8-10 minutes. Grease a bowl big enough to accommodate double the dough. Place the dough in the greased bowl, then flip over (this way, all sides of the dough is greased). Cover lightly with cling wrap and let rise for 1 hr. [Take note in the photos above, the dough just before baking has the characteristic monay shape that we know after I let it rise for 1-1/2 hrs...but I should have baked these before the dough looked like so, because when I baked them, the puffing of the dough in the heat made the slit almost disappear...so I edited the time of rising here to be only one hour, and hopefully it will give you and I baked monays that have that slight dip at the middle...]

After one hour, take out the dough onto a greased and slightly floured surface. Grease your rolling pin. Flatten the dough with the rolling pin, then fold the dough, and repeat the flatten-fold-flatten-fold cycle until the dough is smooth and dense (about 8 minutes). If it becomes too sticky, very lightly flour the surface.

With dough cutter, cut into 3-oz pieces (if you did not cut the right amount, you can either cut off or add small pieces and press together to make 3-oz piece). Shape into round rolls and place on greased baking sheet (preferably aluminum). If you prefer smaller monays, make them 2-oz each. I am cutting here based on how I remember them during those days I was helping in my Tatay's bakery in shaping them to round rolls.

Before the final rising, using swift smooth motion, make deep slits at the middle of the pieces, leaving only about 1/3 of the bottom dough uncut. You might have to do this twice, since the first cutting motion gives you only good cut at one side of the pieces, so that you will have to turn the pan around and make second cuts along the same line to achieve uniformly deep slits. If the cut portions tend to stick together, gently separate them with the blade. Cover lightly with greased cling wrap. Let rise for 40-60 minutes. [Don't wait for the unbaked pieces to look more like the monay you are used to, because if you do, you will end up with overpuffed middle like I did. I should have baked these earlier (my total final rising time was 1-1/2 hours; maybe 1 hr would be enough). The middle of the pieces should still look a tad lower than the baked monay you are used to seeing. The oven heat will puff up the middle some more. Monay characteristically has a bit low dip at the middle (the slit) of the two cheeks. Well, you know what the connotation of "monay" is among Filipinos when they do not refer to these rolls.]

For putok, cut dough pieces about 1.5 to 2 oz each and shape into round rolls. Snip in a cross manner at the top to give you a crown. After the rising period (I suggest only 30 minutes because puto is characteristically very very dense and hard), brush the crown part with milk and sprinkle with sugar crystals.

Bake at 350 deg F for 15 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Enjoy with ice cream filling while hot. Cool on wire rack. Place in ziploc bag as soon as cool enough to do so without sweating inside.

Camote (Sweet Potato) Pandesal and Pandelimon

Several days ago, I got an email from sassysweets inviting me to join a contest to come up with recipes using sweet potatoes, for anything easy and quick enough to be a part of everyday family meal. The contest is hosted by NC Sweet Potatoes and there is unlimited number of entries. I don't know exactly how I got invited, but I welcome the opportunity to explore cooking and baking with potatoes. You can read more about the contest in the sweetbytes blog. This post will be the first in my camote series. You will see more in the following days on camote, but I will also post about other things in between.

Because of this contest, I thought I would experiment more on the use of sweet potatoes. While we Filipinos are used to incorporating sweet potatoes (camote) in our dishes, we never really explored its potential in baking until recently, in an attempt to lessen the use of wheat in flour and beat the high price of yeast breads/rolls.

I first made pandesal and pandelimon, two of the mostly consumed yeast rolls in the Philippines. Although I have posted in the past about pandesal using just regular flour, I will feature it here with the use of sweet potato. Pandesal is a Filipino breakfast staple, eaten plain or with fillings such as jams, cheese, butter/margarine, peanut butter, or even meats (corned beef and liver spread being the most popular), along with a cup of coffee or a mug of milk. I already have a post here on my favorite pandesal recipes using the bread machine. Now I have made the dough using sweet camote, still with the use of the bread machine, to come up with super soft pandesal and pandelimon. Bread machine has been a friend of mine as it helps making yeast rolls a breeze even for a working mother like me. Pandelimon, when made larger, is excellent for burger buns, but I love eating the small one plainly served during dinner. It can rival, if it's not better than, the rolls served in one of the major family restaurants here in our town. The only difference in the two is the bread crumbs used to coat pandesal, and their shape. I love the pleasant yellowish color the sweet potato imparts, as this creates the impression that extra egg yolks were added.

Even if I end up not winning the first prize for the said contest, I will be just as happy to be able to come up with recipes here using camote/sweet potatoes that Philippine-based readers of my blog could make use of as a resource for a potential business in that country. Camote is very cheap in the Philippines compared to flour, and the soft yellowish rolls they create will probably boost up sales and profit.

Ingredients:

1 / 2 cup milk
1 / 4 cup water
1 / 2 cup boiled and mashed sweet potato
1 / 4 cup butter or margarine
1 large egg
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups bread flour + 2-3 tbsp while kneading
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp Fleischmann's bread machine yeast

Instructions:

Mix the milk, water and mashed sweet potatoes and heat in the microwave for around 1-1/2 minutes. Add the butter and egg, beat to mix then check temperature. It should be between 70-80 deg F (room temp). Pour into the bread machine pan. Add the dry ingredients. Set at dough cycle. after about 10 minutes, start adding flour gradually so that the dough is not too sticky (try to poke from time to time with fingers). It should appear relatively smooth and moist, not wet or flaky. The kneading ends on the 30th minute, then it rises for 1 hr.

Transfer the dough on a lightly floured surface (it will shrink). Make a log out of the dough, cut some to form into smooth balls (sprinkle with some flour again as you get a new ball. Shaping this takes practice. The surface should not be too floury or you won't shape effectively, but must not have too little flour so that it becomes sticky and the surface of ball appears very rough). Arrange balls on greased baking sheet as shown in the slide. Cover with damp flour sack in a draft-free place until doubled in size, about 45 minutes. For the remaining log of dough, cut at intervals of 1 to 1-1/2 inch for pandesal. Roll in bread crumbs and arrange on greased baking pan. Let rise for 30 minutes. I like placing them inside the oven, then turn on the oven for a minute and turned off to create that warm draft-free environment.

Bake at 375oF for 12-15 minutes or until done, first the pandesal followed by the pandelimon. Remove from pan and serve hot; cool on wire rack completely then place in ziploc after about 30 minutes those you will not consume right away. To enjoy hot the next days, use oven toaster and bake at 350 deg F for 3 minutes.

My next post will be on the sinfully delicious almond sans rival, which I will also post as a series, interspersed with camote series.

Pandelimon de Patatas

This month, the LP 15 is entitled "Recycled, Reloaded." Very appropriate for the culture who "waste not, want not." Visions of my recycled foods come into mind, both for re-cooking and for other valuable uses to lessen my contribution to the waste dump. How do I recycle foods? Let me count my ways.



First off, if I can freeze them, I do them in servings of one for quick lunch fix at times I am alone (or for my son who craves for heavy merienda). If I have leftover Korean beef and mashed potatoes or rice, or kare-kare with rice, or adobo with rice, I place them in a foil-lined small loaf pan and wrap, then freeze without the pan. I reheat these in oven toaster for 30 minutes at 350 deg prior to eating.



Second, I "remodel" some grilled or slow cooked meaty dishes to come up with new ones. Pancit, chicken empanada, chicken-veggie egg drop soup, chicken sopas and chicken mami noodles come to mind when I have leftover roasted chicken; special fried rice and ham-veggie omellet when I have leftover veggies and ham; beef siopao and asado roll when I have leftover beef pares; and fish lumpia, escabeche, sarsiado, or dinengdeng when I have leftover grilled/fried fish.



Third, I turn my old bread slices into bread pudding, french toast, biscocho or bread crumbs.



Fourth, I may not re-cook them. All biodegradable scraps (veggie peelings, seeds, or bones) and leftover I produce from my kitchen either go to chicken food bucket (goes to my MIL) or to my compost bucket (goes under the garden dirt). I do not consider them "waste" at all.



That said, I have tons of recipes in mind for this round of LP hosted by Lafang. But I do not have the luxury of time to post the recipes, or I might have posted about them in past entries, and I do not want to be redundant. Hence, I have decided to post two of them: Pandelimon de Patatas is my first entry. The next post will be Fish Lumpia.



I do not claim originality for this recipe. It so happened that in my wish to make use of leftover boiled potatoes, I looked for recipes for rolls/breads making use of them, as usual, from my fave bread machine recipe source, breadworld.com. I found Potato Dinner Rolls. After it was baked, it reminded me so much of pandelimon; hence , the name I gave it. I just omitted the egg glaze. I can't give you the link to the bread machine recipe because they seem to have deleted that and replaced with the conventional method (that is the link I used). Here is the bread machine version, edited by yours truly. The first time I made it, the dough was too sticky to form into balls. So on my second time (I baked again per husband's and son's request), I added more flour while the BM was kneading, and it solved my problem).



INGREDIENTS:



1 / 2 cup milk

1 / 4 cup potato water

1 / 2 cup boiled and mashed potato

1 / 4 cup butter or margarine

1 large egg

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

3 cups bread flour + 2-3 tbsp while kneading

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp Fleischmann's bread machine yeast



DIRECTIONS:

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Mix the milk, potato water and mashed potatoes and heat in the microwave for 30 seconds or so. Add the butter and egg, beat to mix then check temperature. It should be between 70-80 deg F (room temp). Pour into the bread machine pan. Add the dry ingredients. Set at dough cycle. after about 10 minutes, start adding flour gradually so that the dough is not too sticky (try to poke from time to time with fingers). It should appear relatively smooth and moist, not wet and flaky. The kneading ends on the 30th minute, then it rises for 1 hr.



Transfer the dough on a lightly floured surface (it will shrink). Divide dough into 15 equal portions (around 2 ounces if you are using a scale); form into smooth balls (sprinkle with some flour again as you get a new ball. Shaping this takes practice. The surface should not be too floury or you won't shape effectively, but must not have too little flour so that it becomes sticky and the surface of ball appears very rough). Arrange balls in parchment paper-lined baking pan as shown in the slide. Cover with damp flour sack in a draft-free place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.



Bake at 375oF for 15-20 minutes or until done. Remove from pan and serve hot; cool on wire rack completely then place in ziploc those you will not consume right away. Very good as chicken sandwich or toasted with cheese on top.



Announcement: Breadworld has a bread brigade movement. If you are in the US or Canada and a baking-with-yeast enthusiast like me, join for free recipes and coupons.



LP 15 entry