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A couple days ago, I was speaking to my son Andy about cooking and brought up bread machines and the joys of making bread; how crafting a loaf of bread using basic ingredients is a lot of fun. Well, I hadn’t done so in quite a while, so I figured I’d go ahead and do it, and what better ramen bread to make but something Taiwanese?
Recently, I thought it would be interesting to revisit my fascination with bread – and ramen. I’ve found that baking bread with a bread machine isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – but using one to make dough is very cool! In the past, I’ve infused instant noodles directly into the dough; something that produced something a little funky. In my last endeavor, I used a mold shaped like a fish and we took the dough out, put it in, filled it, then added more bread on top. Since then, I’ve tried making a pizza – which had excellent results! I even used gluten free pizza dough to make my wife a pizza and that honestly was even better.
First off, I like to do things with noodles and my bread machine. I thought for some reason making a loaf in the shape of a fish would be a good idea. I get these ideas out of nowhere – call it a divine vision if you want, but I wouldn’t go that far. But it hit me and so I figured I ought to go for it.
The day before Thanksgiving I didn’t have anything ready to go for review, so I decided why not crank out a loaf of bread? I used Lai Noodle, a product from Hi-Lai Foods of Taiwan. They’d just sent a ton of great samples and so I thought it would be interesting to try. Here we go!
Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s gone mad, The Ramen Rater, he has.’ Not in the slightest. No more than usual, at least. I thought I would try something and see what would happen. Making bread is a lot of fun and I’ve never made any kind of really sweet sugary bread before and kimchi ramen would have a tangy and acidic bump to it, right? Well, so here we are. Tons of candy in the house and a bread machine wanting to make ramen bread. Let’s give it a try!
After our last bread experiment went horribly wrong, I decided to regroup and make something that seemed like it could not go wrong. Also, it’s curry. Curry bread! This is going to be good, right? It must be!
I left it up to the wise folks in the Ramen Junkie group on facebook (you should really join if you haven’t) and of two choices they picked this for me to make into bread. It didn’t go as planned, but it was addictive and tasty and so here it is in all of it’s glorious ingloriousness.
At the outset of my bread making journey, the idea of making a loaf of bread by grinding up noodle blocks was always in the back of my head. Literally transmuting instant noodles through kitchen alchemy into a loaf of bread. I tried it once and it failed miserably. I wanted to find out why and I asked an expert in the field of wheat and noodles. Well, he said I needed an emulsifier – that would release the oil from the ramen ‘flour. Huge thanks to Dr. Gary Hou!’ Well, let’s see how it went this time – spoiler alert – it worked!
Yeah I’m back at it. I saw a Zojirushi bread machine at a thrift store the other day and thought ‘man, this thing looks cherry,’ so I carried the thing to the grocery store where I got a gallon of milk and other stuff (which was my original reason for venturing out) and then had to carry everything home. This bread machine isn’t small or anything so yeah – it was a battle I fought and won which I enjoy thoroughly.
Yeah, after the last attempt at making bread out of South Korean instant noodles, I needed to explore further. Today, I’m going to infuse a loaf with a block of instant noodles, a can of corn, and chicken, and a wallop of sesame seeds! One thing to note – in the video I mention the dates this one will release on YouTube – I made a mistake. It’ll release on September 20th, and it will also release on December 24th – I thought it would on September 23rd. So, that was a mistake. Let’s take a trip down Corn Lane!
Thanks to a nice shipment from the folks at Red Chef in Malaysia (you’ll see the unboxing soon), some Spicy Sakura Prawn Soup Noodle came and that was what I was waiting for! I thought a prawn mee from Malaysia in a loaf of bread could be interesting – especially if I dump a ton of shrimp in with it! Did it work? Of course it did! Check out the video and the recipe is down below.
I left it to the folks over at the Ramen Junkie Facebook group to pick which #ramenbread would be next for me. I really wanted to do something that incorporated a South Korean variety – last time I tried that though, it was a big fail as I tried to make flour with the noodles. I’ve learned that is definitely NOT the way to go, but using cooked noodles and bread flour in a good mix makes for a nice moist cake and crisp crust. Well, here it is! Best loaf yet and infused with chashu, cheese, and egg. Let’s see what happens when I try to put a ton of stuff in a little loaf of bread with a big block of ramen in it!
Today, I decided to make something spicy. Really spicy! I had a six pack of these Mamee Shinsegae Ghost Pepper Chicken cups sitting here – I’ve done the mukbang and the review – so why not… BREAD?! They have dark noodles and sauce sachets – this one was sure to burn – and it does. Let’s check it out!
Well a good day to you! Two days ago, I attempted a bread made solely from ground instant noodles that came out horribly. This on the other hand came out very well. I can’t really give you a recipe to speak of since so much of it was improvised in the moment, but here’s a rough idea of what I did.
