Korean Bread

Photo: flickr user avlxyz

Ingredients

1 pound Malt flour

2 pounds Of red pepper powder

5 pounds Wheat flour

1 pound Soybean flour, fermented

1 gal Water

1 pound Salt

Preparation

Lately I've been getting more into Japanese cooking which is different enough from Chinese that I had to do some serious larder stocking. It took visits to three different stores but I finally come up with the basics. One of the the stores turned out to beta da!a Korean market so I now have the malt flour you keep referring to. In fact, I just put the first loaf utilizing it into the bread machine a few minutes ago. Depending on how this loaf turns out, I'll post the recipe I've worked out for oatmeal bread.

This Korean market is a fairly decent sized store for a hole in the wall and they have just about everything one would need for Korean cooking, including a fresh meat counter. Nice find! I'm used to buying things with labels I can't read, but a lot of the stock in this store didn't have*any* labels at all! This stuff was obviously locally produced by the Korean community and some was recognizable as Kim Chee, various bean pastes and the like, but with some of the stuff, I had absolutely no idea what it wasor even whether it was animal or vegetable in origin. I'll go back when I have some time and find out what all those goodies are.

Here's a recipe that was on the bag of malt flour I thought you might get a kick out of. This is exactly the way it appeared on the bag.

Put malt flour into lukewarm water and set aside for about 1 hour.

Pour the malt melted water into pot (throw away the button setting).

Put wheat flour into malt water, and make slow boil on low heat, and then simmer for about 1 hour. Remove the glue from heat and mix fermented soy bean flour and then lastly add hot pepper powder and salt, and mix well.*As for salt, you may add or reduce to your taste.

*For soup use (Chigae), you better add more fermented soy bean flour.