Bake-n-Blog: Panda Bread Challenge

Okay, so this isn't a true bake-n-blog, because I didn't really have time to photograph the play by plays.  I thought I would, but then realized that the prep time was like 3 hours.. and I had dinner plans.. so let's start..


A friend of mine found this on the internet a couple months back and asked me to make it..

http://cookpad.com/recipe/349795

The concept looked really cool, but the recipe was in Japanese, so there's no way I could follow it.  The site was cool though, because the followers actually tried the recipe and created pandas of their own and posted it back to the blog!  It was entertaining to see how some came out all warped, and at the same time showed how funny it could turn out.

Then..

 A couple weeks ago, I came upon some English translations of the recipe!  We have to try this now!  I raised interest within a group of coworkers while I was at it (what could be more fun?), and the challenge was on!  We created general guidelines to avoid cheating and also build up suspense... Everyone participating had to bring in their loaf as is, and we'll all cut into them together!

Now, for those interested in trying this out, here are a few online recipes that uses slightly different ingredients.  You could probably find others online, but they're generally the same, just a difference between bread flour and cake flour vs. all-purpose and cornflour, etc.  And I must warn you, the prep time they listed is 3 hours.. don't skimp too much, because it's mainly for proofing the dough.

The original translated version (uses bread machine, bread flour, cake flour):

http://wlteef.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

Bread flour and cake flour recipe; uses dough hook attachment of mixer:

http://www.pigpigscorner.com/2009/09/panda-bread.html

All purpose flour and corn flour recipe; uses dough hook attachment of mixer:

http://www.notquitenigella.com/2009/08/04/panda-bread/

So today.. we had our revealing... all the creations on the table:

One of the girls decided to make an anatomically correct panda..... and one of the boys didn't measure or knead his dough properly...

Then, we had one where the dough went wrong, and he didn't have enough cocoa to create another, so he used red food colouring instead..

 And a procrastinator who didn't start his bread til 2am.. ended up sleeping at 5:30am.. and waking up to bake at 7:30am before going to work... It was still warm when we cut into it!  Serious respect for not skipping on steps when working at such hours at night!

 And then we have a rookie baker create a seriously stylish panda..

And finally, my panda!