Introducing ”Banh Mi Viet Nam”
”Banh Mi” is celebrated as one of the best street food and the best sandwich in the world. Even “Banh Mi” – (banh mi /ˈbɑːn miː/) was honored to be one of three Vietnamese words included in the Oxford dictionary data, along with “Pho” (pho /fə ː/) and “Ao Dai” ” – (ao dai /ˈaʊ ˌdʌɪ/), all are enough to prove the popularity and irresistible charm of this dish.
In Vietnam, people can meet any bread shop all over the street, from the National Highway, the main road to the little known alleys. Although extremely popular, not everyone can claim to fully understand this “sandwich”.
What is bread?
Bread is a food made from flour from crushed grains mixed with water, usually by baking. Throughout history it has been popular all over the world and is one of the oldest man-made foods, and has been important since the dawn of agriculture.
There are many combinations and ratios of flours and other ingredients, and there are also different traditional recipes and methods for making bread. As a result, there are many varieties, shapes, sizes and textures of bread in different regions.
Bread can be fermented by a variety of processes, from the use of natural microorganisms (e.g. in sourdough) to the use of artificial ventilation with high pressure in the preparation process baked.
However, some remaining bread products are left unfermented, either for taste, or for traditional or religious reasons. Many non-grain ingredients can be included in bread: from fruits and nuts to various fats. Commercial bread in particular often contains additives, some of them non-nutritive, intended to improve taste, texture, color, shelf life, or to make manufacturing easier.
Depending on local customs, bread can be eaten in different forms at any meal of the day. It is also eaten as a snack, or used as an ingredient in other culinary preparations, such as fried foods wrapped in layers of bread so as not to stick, or as the main ingredient of a cake. pudding noodles, used as a filler to insert into decayed teeth, or to retain juices so that they are less likely to be lost by dripping.
Read More: Vietnamese Bread
History – Origin of Vietnamese Bread & Bread
Bread is one of the oldest manufactured foods. Evidence from 30,000 years ago in Europe shows that there is starch in the stones used to cut trees. It is possible that during this time, starch extracts from the roots of plants, such as cattails and ferns, were placed on a flat rock, then placed over an open fire and cooked into a form of bread. original slice.
Around 10,000 BC, with the dawn of the Neolithic and the expansion of agriculture, grains, especially wheat, became the main ingredient of bread. Yeast spores are ubiquitous, including on the surface of food crops, so any flour that has been aged will naturally ferment. There are many literary sources that show that bread was originally fermented. Airborne yeast can be used by leaving uncooked flour exposed to the air for some time before cooking.
In 1961, the bread making process was developed, which uses great mechanical pressure on the flour to significantly reduce the fermentation time and time taken to create a loaf. This process uses a high energy mixing process that allows lower protein granules to be used, which is now widely used worldwide in large plants. As a result, bread can be produced very quickly and at a low cost for the producer as well as the consumer.
There is still a theory that the Egyptians who lived on the banks of the Nile invented bread. “The Egyptians recorded it all on papyrus and carved in stone important moments of everyday life. Actions are said to last and be repeated even beyond the world” – historian French scholar Adrien Berthelot explained to the Catholic daily La Croix (July 25, 2016).
According to him, the conversion of wheat into bread occurred during the period of global warming. The process of settlement and development of crops was observed at many locations around the planet and took place in the same time period. Water is essential to make the production cycle work.
The Nile, with its floods and fertile marshes, opened this way to the Egyptians. Mesopotamia is the ideal region. Herodote once said that Egypt was a gift of the Nile. An oasis stretching for 2,000km, became an important grain growing area and the starting point of the Roman granary…
And during the long marches of Alexander the Great (356 – 323 BC), the Greeks captured the Egyptian invention: bread. By improving it and adding flavors like anise or honey, they brought bread into an era of culinary with 72 different varieties.
Regardless of the hypothesis or research work, until now barley – one of the world’s five main food crops, along with rice, corn (maize), cassava and potatoes, is still the raw material. The main thing that makes bread.
Origin of Vietnamese Bread
There are many people who disagree with the view that Vietnamese bread originated from France, but in fact, bread was gradually introduced to Vietnam, and especially to Saigon from 1859, the expedition occupied the city. Gia Dinh of the French colonialists brought bread closer to the people. Initially, this type of food was considered by our people as a snack, not as a main dish. Bread is used to eat through the meal, not as complete as a regular meal. Gradually, bread has become one of the features of Vietnamese cuisine.
The beginning of bread in Saigon in particular, and of Vietnam in general, was the Baguette bread brought by the French in the early 19th century. By 1975, the traditional French brick ovens in the decade The 50s and 60s were not able to meet the increasing demand in Saigon, so a number of electric ovens and “drum-baked bread” were produced from large drums. (200L).
During the conversion process, the Saigon people processed the baguette into a typical Saigon bread with a shorter length, only about 30-40 cm. The loaf of bread, processed and added with meat, became so familiar that it became a popular Vietnamese dish, believed to have been around for 150 years. And depending on the ingredients inside, sandwiches have different names.
