So we've had an overview of various distinct types of rusk... time for a level up in course difficulty! And on to some finer aspects... This time, we'll explore soft bread rusks. I guess these are basically made from bread that is allowed to rise more, resulting in it having larger pockets of air and therefore being softer.
These were acquired from a bakery around Namba Station, Osaka, called Pan to Rasuku no o-Mise Tobira (Tobira - bread and rusk shop). They had many flavours - 10 in total according to a promotional image on the site, but we just got these four.
(Oh yeah, just ignore the two Maki Pies flanking the green rusk.) They're from another shop and I've already featured them in this post. We're looking at the four soft bread rusks that are labelled colourfully.
The thing about soft bread rusk is that it gives a much finer, more delicate crisp. It's a light snack that's easy on the palette and gives you more room to savour the flavour.
Matcha Soft Bread Rusk
Let's start with the green one.
It had a light green tea flavour that nonetheless permeated my palette. Like a refreshing tea that you can crunch on.
They used butter for this one, although vegetable oil was also an ingredient. Maybe that was for the bread... although this ingredient doesn't appear for all the flavours. So that's puzzling.
Caramel Rusk
Next, it's the uniformly and more intense brown one - top left in the left image, and leftmost in the right image.
The caramel was not to sweet, and the flavour was not overpowering, but the buttery caramel flavour was still distinct. Nice and light, in contrast to the usual heavy caramel flavours.
Apparently, the caramel is just a flavouring. And neither butter nor vegetable oils were on the ingredients list. Really puzzling given that caramel is supposed to have butter, whereas the matcha flavoured one, for which butter makes no sense, had butter in it.
Brown Rice Sugar Rusk
Now, we look at the light brown one - top right in the left image and rightmost in the right image.
This tasted like sweet and crispy brown rice puffs, except that the brown rice taste was very strong. It was a bit sweet, but it was ok because it went well with the bread.
This one contained shortening. Bleah
Italian Rusk
Finally, we have the only savoury one in this range - top middle in both images. As you can see in the right image, it got damaged in transit.
It had a strong olive oil flavour with red pepper. The flavour was mild, however, and not much salt was used either. This is probably the lightest of all the flavours.
According to the ingredients list, cream was used too, but I couldn't quite distinguish it.
Also, unfortunately, they used MSG for this one.
I found the ingredients list very puzzling though... each has such a different list. Why use shortening in just one and not the others? And why on the brown rice sugar flavoured one only? (Not that I mind that shortening wasn't used for the others though... ) And why use butter for the matcha one but not the caramel one? And why does the matcha one have vegetable oil? Sounds really haphazard to me.
Ruskology 204 - Matcha Bread Rusk
These were acquired from a bakery around Namba Station, Osaka, called Pan to Rasuku no o-Mise Tobira (Tobira - bread and rusk shop). They had many flavours - 10 in total according to a promotional image on the site, but we just got these four.
The thing about soft bread rusk is that it gives a much finer, more delicate crisp. It's a light snack that's easy on the palette and gives you more room to savour the flavour.
Matcha Soft Bread Rusk
Let's start with the green one.
It had a light green tea flavour that nonetheless permeated my palette. Like a refreshing tea that you can crunch on.
They used butter for this one, although vegetable oil was also an ingredient. Maybe that was for the bread... although this ingredient doesn't appear for all the flavours. So that's puzzling.
Caramel Rusk
Next, it's the uniformly and more intense brown one - top left in the left image, and leftmost in the right image.
The caramel was not to sweet, and the flavour was not overpowering, but the buttery caramel flavour was still distinct. Nice and light, in contrast to the usual heavy caramel flavours.
Apparently, the caramel is just a flavouring. And neither butter nor vegetable oils were on the ingredients list. Really puzzling given that caramel is supposed to have butter, whereas the matcha flavoured one, for which butter makes no sense, had butter in it.
Brown Rice Sugar Rusk
Now, we look at the light brown one - top right in the left image and rightmost in the right image.
This tasted like sweet and crispy brown rice puffs, except that the brown rice taste was very strong. It was a bit sweet, but it was ok because it went well with the bread.
This one contained shortening. Bleah
Italian Rusk
Finally, we have the only savoury one in this range - top middle in both images. As you can see in the right image, it got damaged in transit.
It had a strong olive oil flavour with red pepper. The flavour was mild, however, and not much salt was used either. This is probably the lightest of all the flavours.
According to the ingredients list, cream was used too, but I couldn't quite distinguish it.
Also, unfortunately, they used MSG for this one.
~~~
Overall, they were quite enjoyable, for those with an itchy mouth and just needing something to crunch on, but not wanting something heavy.I found the ingredients list very puzzling though... each has such a different list. Why use shortening in just one and not the others? And why on the brown rice sugar flavoured one only? (Not that I mind that shortening wasn't used for the others though... ) And why use butter for the matcha one but not the caramel one? And why does the matcha one have vegetable oil? Sounds really haphazard to me.
Other related food
If you found this interesting, check out these other posts in the rusk series:
Comments
Post a Comment