Tuna Spinach Spread

I DON'T LIKE VEGETABLES. There, I said it. I know we have to eat vegetable, I know, I know, and I know if I want my daughter to eat her veggies, I need to eat mine too. But.. I just, don’t like it. Lol. So I often had to find ways to incorporate it in my diet.

Tuna has a really strong flavor which was great to sorta minimize the veggie taste of spinach.  Along with the spices and the tanginess of the mayo, I don’t even notice spinach in this spread!

1 can Tuna flakes (Century tuna brand lang, anything else doesn’t taste as good.)

¼ c canned spinach(fresh would’ve been nicer, kaso wala dito)

¾ c non fat mayo

¼ c onions, chopped finely

¼ c splenda

1 tsp salt

2 tsp pepper

1 tbsp pickle relish (optional)

Mix everything together. Spread on bread :D

Refrigerate left overs.

Wheat Pan-de-sal

Pan de sal (Bread of salt/salty bread) is the most popular yeast-raised bread in the Philippines. It’s equivalent to the breakfast or dinner rolls other nations have. Tapos kailangan lagi agahan ang gising, because they usually run out of pan de sal around 8am, or maybe wait for a boy in a bicycle with a honk selling the same thing. I have had it every morning since I was a child. 

Most of the Filipinos usually dip the bread in their hot drink, like coffee or Milo. I never liked the combination, so when I was a kid, I remember always (repeatedly) asking my lolo why he was dipping the bread into his coffee. He would say that dipping it would not require a filling (palaman) anymore, and that would save us money. LOL. 

My favorite palaman for pan de sal is condensed milk. I remember when I was a kid, before we had discovered Nutella, my mom would make a chocolate spread by adding cocoa powder to the condensed milk. i go crazy for it. Like many pinoys, I also like pairing it with LuckyMe pansit canton, corned beef, mami, sotanghon and butter or Star margarine sprinkled with sugar.  Ahhh, I’m being nostalgic again.

But that was when I was young; when I wasn’t so concerned with my weight, with nutrition and diabetes. A low calorie wheat pan de sal. What a treat! I got the original recipe from Manang K’s website (http://kusinanimanang.blogspot.com) and please, kindly visit her page for the recipe. I’m a big, big fan, kaya most of my baked products were results of her recipes. :D

So what you’re gonna see below is a slimmed down version of Manang’s pan de sal. Again, visit her page for the original recipe, they were a so nice too!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup non-fat milk
• 2 tbsp water
• 1/2 cup boiled and mashed sweet potato
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter (ICIB brand)
• 3 tbsp applesauce (Gerber brand)
• 2 Egg whites
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour + 2-3 tbsp while kneading
• 1 1/2 cups bread flour
• 2 tbsp Wheat Germ 
• 1/4 cup Agave syrup
• 2 Tbsp Splenda
• 2 tsp Fleischmann's bread machine yeast

Instructions:

1. In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. Add the apple sauce and let cool. You don’t want to cook the eggs before kneading.
2. Whisk in the milk, water, mashed sweet potatoes and agave syrup then check its temperature. It should be at room temp, between 70-80 deg F. Finally, whisk in the egg whites.
3. Pour into the bread machine pan followed by the dry ingredients. Start the dough cycle. Gradually add flour if the dough formed seems too sticky.
4. On a floured surface, transfer the dough and form it into a log about 2 feet long. Slice every 1-1.5 inches intervals then coat with breadcrumbs. Arrange the dough pieces on a baking pan (I used cookie sheet and they came out flatter than usual) 1 to 2 fingers apart.
5. Let rise in a warm oven for 30 minutes or until double in bulk.
6. Bake at 375 deg F for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, then bake for additional 2-3 minutes or until browned to your liking.
7. Let cool in wire racks before storing.

It was so light and soft and airy unlike the first pan de sal I made back then, which was rock hard and utterly inedible lol.. 

I tried it with Nutella and did it taste awesome!! And take note, each piece has just 96 calories and less than 1g of fat :) Just take a little care on the filling, this is one guilt-free merienda! A also rolled some of the dough  into "cinnamon rolls" because I..well.. love cinnamon. LOL.

It also goes so well with the Tuna Spinach Spread I made :D

UPDATE: July 3, 2012

My first attempt at this recipe resulted in well, flatter pan de sal. I wanted the “madaya” pan de sal my grandparents always whine about, yung puro hangin lang kaya you have to buy more kasi di ka mabubusog. LOL. But I think that pan de sal is perfect, making the bread’s texture more awesome.  As per Manang has suggested, I used active dry yeast instead of bread machine yeast and added more flour. I ran out of sweet potato (which was a shock) so I used butternut squash instead. I remember making bread in high school using kalabasa, so I thought this would just do the job. Here is the new recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup non-fat milk
• 3/4 cup boiled and mashed butternut squash
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter (ICIB brand)
• 3 tbsp applesauce (Gerber brand)
• 2 Egg whites
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 cups whole wheat flour 
• 1 1/2 cups bread flour + 2-3 tbsp while kneading
• 2 tbsp Wheat Germ 
• 1 tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 1/3 cup Agave syrup
• 2 Tbsp Splenda
• 2 tsp Fleischmann's active dry yeast
• 1/4 c raw rolled oats

I added the rolled oats during the last minutes of kneading, just to add more substance to the bread. You know, make it heavier, make me feel more full.

If this is your first time to make pan de sal with a breadmaker, don’t forget to visit Manang’s recipe which has a video kung pano hulmahin yung pan de sal. I had to visit this while making the bread hahaha. Here’s the link: http://kusinanimanang.blogspot.com/2006/10/pan-de-sal_01.html

And if you don’t have a bread machine, you could always do this manually. However, it takes practice bago nyo makuha ang tamang “feel” of a  dough that is ready. Trust me, I had a lot of hard rock pan de sal sa pinas na hindi maatim itapon ng lola ko sa panghihinayang. LOL. Manang shows you how in this video : http://kusinanimanang.blogspot.com/2012/02/manual-prep-of-bread-machine-dough.html

UPDATE: October 20, 2012

This is just an even easier version of the pan de sal:

• 1/2 cup non-fat milk
• 1 6oz bottle sweet potatoes (Gerber brand)
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter (ICIB brand)
• 2 Egg whites
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 cups whole wheat flour 
• 1 1/2 cups bread flour + 2-3 tbsp while kneading
• 2 tbsp Wheat Germ 
• 2 tsp double acting baking powder
• 1 tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 1/3 cup Agave syrup
• 3 Tbsp Splenda
• 2 tsp Fleischmann's active dry yeast
• 1/4 c raw rolled oats (not flour)

Manang K's BM Spanish Bread

I guess most of you have already noticed my great love for baking. Sayang lang kasi there are 2 adults here sa bahay. I want to make a lot nung nasa pinas ako, at maraming nagaantay na kakain ng mga gagawin ko, pero the kitchen not being mine, and mine alone, made this endeavor really difficult. when i had to bake, my lola has to make dinner, or the baking tools are almost always missing, and the really awful floorplan (not to mention the flooring) of our kitchen is really making me nuts everytime i try to bake something.though I must admit I like the part where in I just leave all the dirty dishes on the sink and they magically disappear a few hours after lol..

Last May 08, I made my first try of Manang Kusinera's BM Spanish bread, then the second one, yesterday. I will explain the differences of these tries at the end of this post.

This post shall contain the ingredients list, but for the proportions, kindly visit Manang K’s site. This is just a little gesture to thank her for all those tutorials. It's gonna help get more traffic to her website. :D

Ingredients:

Dough:

• Milk
• Water
• Egg
• Butter
• Salt
• Bread Flour
• White Sugar
• Yeast

Filling:

• Softened Butter
• Sugar
• Cinnamon (optional  MUST TRY)

Bread Crumbs

Tools:

• Bread Machine
• Cookie sheet
• Cling wrap
• Oven

Directions:

Place the ingredients as shown in your bread machine manual. Mine says the liquid ingredients first, the dry ingredients, then the yeast. A good trick is to put the butter cut in small pieces or oil on top of the liquid ingredients, the salt next. This is just to prevent the yeast from getting in contact with salt. The salt may inhibit the yeast from doing its job. It should look a lot like this:

While the dough is mixing up in the bread machine, prepare the filling and the kneading station. Once the dough is ready, divide it into portions then flatten them with a rolling pin. I discovered that dough that was flatter produced a better texture. Add flour as needed so that the dough won’t stick to the counter or the rolling pin.

Spread a nice amount of filling on the dough. On my second try I tried cinnamon and cheese as fillings.

Roll up tightly, jell-roll style, starting at the top. Make sure to seal it tightly.

Roll it into breadcrumbs and make sure everything is covered deliberately.

Place them in greased baking pans, with the seams down. Cover the whole thing with cling wrap. The cling wrap I used wasn't very “clingy” so I taped it to the pan so it remains secure.

Let rise for 30 minutes inside the oven with a bowl of hot water inside. They should at least double in size. I've observed that letting them rise for too long (thus let them leaven too much) make the final product seem like it only has air inside and will collapse a few hours after. Resulting to a dense, heavy bread roll.

These were accidentally left to rise for 4 hours (I fell asleep lol)

Bake for 350 deg F for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool before taking off the pan. The filling tends to stick the bread to the pan and taking it off immediately may tear up the bread (trust me – with all my hype and excitement, I really tried haha)

I got so addicted with the cinnamon filled ones. The cheese filled ones weren’t so much of a treat – maybe the type of cheese.

Tomorrow I'll try to make this with whey protein and out of wheat flour (I'm starting to stay away from pure white bread - diet diet haha) to make this a post workout snack or one small meal. Perhaps the same logic with Manang's wheat pandesal? I'll let you kno. much love!