(speaking foreign language)
(yelling in foreign language)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of Anime with Alvin.
Today I'll be making the toast from "Chainsaw Man",
one of this year's most popular anime.
This is a slice of bread.
Toast is made out of bread.
Wow, this is a lot more fun to play with than I thought.
I can see why Denji was so excited about toast.
This is a quite sturdy slice of toast.
I feel like it could go boxing
and play chess at the same time.
To get started,
I'm laying down a piece of parchment paper on a sheet tray,
placing a slice of milk bread
and toasting it until it is toasted.
This is where things get fun.
According to the episode,
Denji likes to add a couple heaping tablespoons
of strawberry jam,
followed by a couple heaping tablespoons of orange jam,
a couple heaping tablespoons of plum jam,
and if that wasn't enough sugar, a generous glug of honey,
followed by a little square of butter
and an unrelenting dusting of cinnamon.
In his eyes,
this is one of the most gourmet foods on the planet.
Is he correct?
Let's see about that.
Although you can't go wrong with toasted bread,
butter, and a lot of sugar,
this is a little too sweet for me,
but I guess that means I'm lucky
that I'm not as deprived as Denji from the show.
But I want to see
if I can make a more realistic version of this dish.
Seeing all of the ingredients that Denji puts on his toast
brings me back to my childhood.
After school, a lot of my friends and I
would go and hang out
at these Asian dessert cafes around town,
where they would serve honey brick toast
which means we have to make our own milk bread.
So in a medium sauce pan,
I'm combining 50 grams of bread flour
with 90 grams of whole milk,
stirring over medium heat until it gets sticky and tight.
What I'm making here is tangzhong,
a gelatinized roux made with milk
that will help make the bread fluffier
and retain its moisture longer down the road.
This is one of the signature steps in making milk bread
compared to normal bread.
Once our little milk flower ball is all toughened up,
it gets wrapped and put in the fridge to cool for later.
For the rest of the bread,
I'm employing the use of a stand mixer,
combining 480 grams of bread flour,
5 grams of instant yeast, 30 grams of sugar,
5 grams of kosher salt,
and breaking the cooled tangzhong into little pieces
and tossing them into the dry mixture.
Then in goes in 60 grams of heavy cream, 40 grams of honey,
and 270 grams of whole milk at roughly room temperature.
This gets kneaded with a dough hook at low to medium speed
for about four to six minutes.
Once the dough has come together,
we're gonna add about 30 grams of unsalted butter,
which has been cubed and is soft.
I'm gonna let the stand mixer go
for about six to eight more minutes
until our dough has become nice and smooth.
This goes into a lightly greased container
wrapped in plastic wrap
and allowed to prove for about one to two hours
or until it's doubled in size.
For our baking vessel,
we have a rectangular Pullman loaf pan.
For flavor and function,
I'm lubing up the sides with some softened butter.
This pan has a few holes
strategically punched into the bottom
to allow for excess steam or butter to leak out.
So if you use this in the oven,
make sure to place a pan lined with parchment paper
underneath whatever you're baking.
Once the dough has fully risen,
I'm letting it satisfyingly escape from its glass prison,
separating it into four equal chunks
and rolling them into little balls.
These four soft milk bread balls
get placed evenly side by side
like good friends inside their new metal prison.
Then the sliding gate of doom slides over on top,
while this dough allowed to rise for 45 more minutes
and think about what it's done.
This is what our little friends look like after 45 minutes.
Kinda looks like the arm of the Michelin Man, or his leg.
To be honest, I don't know which is which.
Anyways, this bakes with a lid on
at 375 degrees for about 30 to 45 minutes.
This is what our homemade milk bread
looks like after baking.
It didn't seem to reach all the way to the top.
Usually these loaves of milk bread
are completely prism-like
because the dough and the oven rises
and presses against the lid of the pan,
but can't escape due to the force of having its lid on.
But this bread is very fluffy and is very good.
Here are a couple of satisfying shots
of me pulling the bread open.
That's nice!
I like this a lot.
Keep running the tape.
It's very squishy, very soft,
and I kind of wish I could face plant
my entire head into it,
but I think someone's already taken that job.
You guys want some bread?
Oh, here you guys go.
Have some bread.
I'm gonna go make a new one.
This time I decided
to increase the batch of my dough by 50%.
And once the dough is finished proofing,
I'm letting it once again satisfyingly tumble out
of its little cage and onto the table,
where I will deflate it, roll it, and slap it around a bit
before dividing it into four equaled sections,
once again rolling them into nice,
satisfyingly taut dough balls
and placing them side by side into their metal prison,
which they might outgrow very soon.
I think I over proofed the dough last time,
causing them to deflate,
so I'm gonna proof them for 10 minutes less.
Whoa, the dough is trying to escape.
I respect that.
Jail's more fun when you can break out of it.
I'm just gonna have to tuck this back in,
like I do with my belly into my jeans after a big meal.
Make sure there's no pinching.
I'm making this once again
at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes
or until the internal temperature is 200 to 205 Fahrenheit.
It seems that there was a little too much dough this time,
but no problem.
All I'm gonna do is chip away at the excess dough
that managed to is barely squeak out.
And with the little excess crust removed
and the help of Rachel, voila!
I'm a lot happier with this one
compared to the first one.
It's got that signature prism-like shape,
the grooves from the pan are edged cleanly
into the bread itself, giving a really nice visual design,
and, most importantly, it holds its shape.
This bread does need a cool until room temperature
before I can start the rest of this dish, however.
Honey brick toast is usually served in the shape of a cube.
The idea here is to cut out a cube of bread
from inside the bread loaf,
a cube within a cube, so to speak.
After the four incisions along the walls are made,
the final incision is made
near the bottom of one of the faces of the bread loaf,
inserting the knife about one centimeter from one edge
and cutting across.
This slice is important because it releases the cube
of bread out from our toast walls.
The reason I'm doing that
is because this clean cube of the white of the bread
now needs to be cut into smaller cubes.
This is basically cube toast inception.
It's pretty hardcore, to be honest.
Just out of curiosity,
this is what our milk bread loaf looks like
compared to the store bought one.
Instead of placing a little square of butter
on top of our toast,
I'm now melting a whole stick of butter, just like that.
Instead of spreading the orange marmalade
directly on our toast,
I'm now adding a heaping tablespoon of it
into our melted butter,
along with a pinch of salt and a couple dashes of cinnamon.
This gets heated into a nice buttery, cinnamony jam mixture
that I'm going to take and spread along the walls
inside and outside of our toast wall fortress.
All of the leftover butter and jam mixture now gets tossed
with our little bread cubes.
Their entire purpose in life is to drink this up.
Once everybody's happily coated
in a layer of butter, jam, and cinnamon,
they go hang out on a sheet tray lined with parchment paper,
baked at 375 for about eight to ten minutes
until the little bread cubes are nice and golden brown.
However, the bread toast wall fortress is not done yet.
And I personally like to face the inside of the wall
towards the oven fan
so it gets a full on blast in the middle.
What's really awesome is that by adding a little bit of jam,
that bit of sugar caramelizes on the surface.
To reinforce the idea of the plum and strawberry jams
used in the original toast,
I'm gonna slice up a few fresh plums and fresh strawberries
into little thin slices.
To assemble, I'm placing down our toasted wall fortress,
followed by a couple of dollops of strawberry jam,
a couple of our toasted bread cubes,
some sliced st strawberries,
a couple of dollops of plum jam,
followed by more bread cubes, some of our orange marmalade,
followed by a little bit more bread cubes,
a little bit of fresh plums,
and the final bits of our strawberries
and final bread cubes.
That's a lot of stuff.
And my favorite part about eating honey brick toast?
The scoop of ice cream right on the very top.
This is what everybody usually fought for
when the dessert hits the table,
but I'm in control this time.
Now, Denji didn't put this on his toast,
but this dish is also often served
with drizzles of a condensed milk on the very top
for both flavor and a visual effect,
especially since this is served on a dark plate.
But as Denji does,
we do finish with a drizzle of honey on top.
Actually, a lot of drizzles.
It's kind of fun to go HAM.
And the final touch to make this a cafe-style dessert,
a sprig of mint.
This is our upgraded version
of the toast that Denji eats in "Chainsaw Man",
the honey brick toast version.
I remember going to these cafes
after school with my friends.
We would do homework, study together,
and just hang out while eating one of these.
It was always a treat though because they were around $20
and we really couldn't afford that at the time.
So when we finally decided
to pool our resources and get one,
it'd always be a silent fight to see you could be more sly,
eat more ice cream, get more of the bread cubes.
I'd always be the one to open the drawbridge, so to speak,
as a method of getting to the valuable contents inside.
Being the hungry fat kid I was,
I would always end up
eating the leftover toast box that remained.
Eating something like this gives me a lot of power,
makes me want to go out there and achieve my dreams.
(light jazz lounge music)