When I have an onion roll, mainly a particular kind, the yellowish spongy kind that I get from 7-11, I like to squoosh it before I eat it. Generally, it's pre-buttered and I accomplish this by sitting on it in the car from when I get it at 7-11 until I feel it is adequately squooshed, as I'm on my way to work. You have to be careful about this, because it's wrapped in plastic wrap, and if you're not careful the plastic wrap may burst resulting in butter on the hindquarters of the pants.
It can spring back quite a bit afterwards. The proper amount of squooshedness is hard to achieve, but even if it's not squooshed enough it's better than if it wasn't squooshed at all. It's hard to squoosh it too much, I think.
Much that has to do with bread, and other foodstuffs (ex-ice cream) has to do with air content. Lately the panini sandwich has become popular in this country, which is a squooshed sandwich. But I've been squooshing rolls for long before this was so. As a child, I would also mix ice cream together until it became more like soft ice cream (I still do). I called it Mushy Goosh (not sure how to spell it, goosh is pronounced with the same 'ush' sound as in 'mushy', but if I spelled it that way it would be pronounced differently (gush). Although it occurs to me that there are 2 pronunciations for 'mushy', I use the deeper one, the one that you wouldn't use in 'gush'). I didn't realize it at the time, but I was basically taking the air out of it. Again, the Italians seem to know about this, as gelato seems to be like this.
One question I wonder about is if bread is better if the air has been sqooshed out of it, or if it was never there to begin with. Take a tortilla for example, is that better, or worse, than a similar bread that had air but was squooshed to the same level? Also, what would it be like to eat bread in a vacuum?
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