Bandros, haha, for old times' sake. Too nostalgic to be turned down.

My old friend once told me 20 years ago - and it tingles my curiosity, there are lots of variants of a particular traditional cake that spreaded throughout mainland Java, some called it Bandros, the others called it Pancung or Pancong; either of the names were used as general name of the aforementioned cake in Bandung (the city that I've been living in since 1972). I spent my adulthood tasting this delicate cuisine.

Back then, Bandros' main ingredient basically consisted of rice flour; but over 3 decades later, it took a gradual modernization of recipe while still earning decent popularity through its particular and classic shape; people now prefer to utilize a mixture of wheat flour and rice flour, or solely based on wheat flour. This is based on the general opinion about the taste of classic recipe, which is sometimes ain't no softer than the newer recipe. The utilization of wheat flour makes this recipe more delicate in texture and commercial. Well then, the recipe would be...

The Recipe :

Yield : 44 portions (@ 12-15 gr)

NO	QUANTITY	UNITS	INGREDIENTS	REMARKS
1.	100	gr	Wheat Flour (Soft)
2.	50	gr	Rice Flour
3.	150	gr	Unripe Coconut (Shredded)
4.	a little	-	Salt
5.	450	ml	Coconut Milk	amount based on 450 gr of shredded coconut
6.	50	gr	Sugar	optional - sprinkled over
7.	a little	-	Cooking Oil	greasing the tin

Methods regarding the recipe :

· Preheat the bandros tin until 180 degrees, but before you started to preheat it, grease the tin with cooking oil.

· Mix all the ingredients, whisk it together until well-combined.

· Pour it to the bandros tin, cover the tin to prevent the steams coming out, wait until the crust show its color, usually it would be golden brown.

· Put out the bandros on a plate, sprinkle it with sugar, then serve it while still hot.

What I like the most from this cake - or mini cake, back then it became a symbol of Indonesians' simplicity and originalities of their cuisine - yet it turned out that most of Indonesian cuisines is not so simple as I thought before.

The Story Behind a Loaf of Bread (part 1)

When ancient man discovered a food which would keep through the winter months, and could be multiplied in the summer, it could be said that civilization began. He might have a reasonably safe store of food to carry him over, which would give him time to develop other useful skills besides hunting, fishing and cattle-herding.

In Old Testament times, all the evidence points to the fact that bread-making, preparing the grain, making the bread and baking it, was the women's work, but in the palaces of kings and princes and in large households, the bakers' duties would be specialised. Bread was leavened, that is, an agent in the form of a 'barm' was added to the dough which caused the mixture to rise in the shape of our familiar loaf. The hurried departure of the Israelites from Egypt, described in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, prevented their bread being leavened as usual; the Jews today commemorate this event by eating unleavened bread on special occasions. The ruins of Pompeii and other buried cities have revealed the kind of bakeries existing in those historic times. There were public bakeries where the poorer people brought their bread to be baked, or from which they could buy ready-baked bread.

A Bakers' Guild was formed in Rome round about the year 168 B.C. From then on the industry began as a separate profession. The Guild or College, called Collegium Pistorum,* did not allow the bakers or their children to withdraw from it and take up other trades. The bakers in Rome at this period enjoyed special privileges: they were the only craftsmen who were freemen of the city, all other trades being conducted by slaves.

The members of the Guild were forbidden to mix with 'comedians and gladiators' and from attending performances at the amphitheatre, so that they might not be contaminated by the vices of the ordinary people. We suppose that the bakers, instead of being honoured by the strict regulations, must have felt deprived by them.

(Link)

Bread in History of Life

Bread, in one form or another, has been one of the principal forms of food for man from earliest times.

The trade of the baker, then, is one of the oldest crafts in the world. Loaves and rolls have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. In the British Museum's Egyptian galleries you can see actual loaves which were made and baked over 5,000 years ago. Also on display are grains of wheat which ripened in those ancient summers under the Pharaohs. Wheat has been found in pits where human settlements flourished 8,000 years ago. Bread, both leavened and unleavened, is mentioned in the Bible many times. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew bread for a staple food even in those days people argued whether white or brown bread was best.

"let me live upon bread and barley of white my ale made of grain red"

Further back, in the Stone Age, people made solid cakes from stone-crushed barley and wheat. A millstone used for grinding corn has been found, that is thought to be 7,500 years old. The ability to sow and reap cereals may be one of the chief causes which led man to dwell in communities, rather than to live a wandering life hunting and herding cattle.

According to botanists, wheat, oats, barley and other grains belong to the order of Grasses; nobody has yet found the wild form of grass from which wheat, as we know it, has developed. Like most of the wild grasses, cereal blossoms bear both male and female elements. The young plants are provided with a store of food to ensure their support during the period of germination, and it is in this store of reserve substance that man finds an abundant supply of food.(Link)