Chinese or Taiwanese Pastry/Baking Cookbook suggestions

[gfron1]

I'm looking for books I may not yet have, and they can be in English or Chinese (I think my Mandarin skills are good enough to survive a cookbook). Youtube content has been helpful but I would prefer something more formal. I suspect there's a whole world of Chinese-language books that I am not aware of. What I have currently:

 

Taiwanese Desserts Ideas, Ilda Eitzen (very poorly written)

Mooncake and Milkbread, Kristina Cho

 

Not exclusively pastry:

First Generation, Frankie Gaw

The Food of Taiwan, Cathy Erway

Win Son, Josh Ku

Made in Taiwan, Clarissa Wei

 

 

[liuzhou]

China has very little history of baking; few restaurants  and even fewer homes have ovens. What breads there are, are usually steamed or dry fried. In my local bookshop all the baking/pastry books in Chinese are about western baking. Hong Kong is different due to the English influence, but even not so common there.

 

The 'cake shops' here all sell over sweet western type goods without anything discernably Chinese except odd ingredients in some cakes. Birthday cakes are mostly ridiculous looking, over-decorated monstrosities and made with lard! Artificial cream, sugar and lard.

 

I realise that doesn't help you, but may explain the lack of respomse to your question.

 

 

[gfron1]

On 1/4/2024 at 4:34 AM, liuzhou said:

I realise that doesn't help you, but may explain the lack of respomse to your question.

I'm not using the correct terminology I suppose. I'm thinking pineapple cakes, all the various buns, taro globes, mooncakes, mochi, etc...

[liuzhou]

18 minutes ago, gfron1 said:

I'm not using the correct terminology I suppose. I'm thinking pineapple cakes, all the various buns, taro globes, mooncakes, mochi, etc...

 

Sorry, but now I'm confused.

 

I've never encountered pineapple cakes in China. That, of course, doesn't mean they don't exist.

99% of buns are steamed not baked.

 

I'm not sure what taro globes are and can only find one reference on-line although it does mention Taiwan.

 

Mooncakes are baked, yes. But almost always by companies who make nothing else. There is one right next to my home. Restaurants buy them in from them.

Mochi is Japanese, not Chinese.

I'd really like to help, but I seriously doubt you're going to find any Chinese language books covering baking. It's a rarely used technique in China.

 

 

[liuzhou]

I was thinking about this topic and your question, this morning. So, I did what I should have done earlier and searched in Chinese for baking cookbooks and chose the images option. Here are the results.

 

Almost everything that turns up looks derived from European and American baking to me.

 

I repeated the search on Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engine. Results here. almost the same. Very little recognisably Chinese.

 

Unfortunately, Google is not available to me at the moment. Presumably, the censors are terrified cakes will bring down the entire system, but you could try using this search term - 烘焙食谱 = baking cookbooks.

Normally, I'd say "If you do find a suitable Chinese language cookbook, please tell me.", but I'm not really a cake person and don't have an oven!

 

Good Luck!

 

 

[Duvel]

On 12/30/2023 at 6:17 PM, gfron1 said:

I'm looking for books I may not yet have, and they can be in English or Chinese (I think my Mandarin skills are good enough to survive a cookbook). Youtube content has been helpful but I would prefer something more formal. I suspect there's a whole world of Chinese-language books that I am not aware of. What I have currently:

 

Taiwanese Desserts Ideas, Ilda Eitzen (very poorly written)

Mooncake and Milkbread, Kristina Cho

 

Not exclusively pastry:

First Generation, Frankie Gaw

The Food of Taiwan, Cathy Erway

Win Son, Josh Ku

Made in Taiwan, Clarissa Wei

 

 

I had to dig a bit in the mancave (where my cooksbooks had to migrate some while ago), but I found this:

 

 

Typical Wei Chuan publication from Taiwan: slightly odd translations at times, but reliable recipes with some background. Describes basic dough properties (cold water dough, hot water dough, laminated dough …) and examples how to use them.

 

 

Many pastries are not traditionally baked, but fried, griddled or steamed. However, there are baked examples as well*. Example recipe (for the book, not the baking):

 

 

Another book with a lower yield of pastry recipes on “Taiwanese night market snacks” …

 

 

 

 

Both books are bilingual, yet with traditional Chinese script. I suggest to look for Wei Chuan publications (Taiwan) on “Chinese snacks” in the US. That should help you. If you need more details/pictures just PM me …

 

—- 

* Contrary to popular belief, quite some folks in Taiwan and China own sophisticated microwave ovens with broiler function, and can bake at home. A (Chinese) friend of mine makes excellent peanut pastries in her home in Shanghai. 
 

 

[blue_dolphin]

@gfron1, this is more Singaporean than Chinese but have you looked at Christopher Tan's books, The Way of Kueh: Savoring & Saving Singapore's Heritage Desserts, Nerd Baker: Extraordinary Recipes, Stories & Baking Adventures from a True Oven Geek and his most recent, Nerd Baker 2: Tales from the Yeast Indies or reached out to him with your query? 

He's @thewayofkueh on Instagram and seems like he might be receptive to such a question. 

 

Edited to add that I started following him on IG a couple of years ago, when Elizabeth Haigh's cookbook, Makan, was withdrawn amid charges of plagiarism.  I don't recall whether his work was involved or he was just speaking out at the time but he's been interesting to follow.  

Edited January 14, 2024 by blue_dolphin (log)

[gfron1]

And last night I had my epipheny  Of course there are culinary schools and of course they would have text books. A friend helped me with my translation search issues (I was simply using:

面点 食谱）and I have a professional pastry book shipping from baidu to his uncle in Shangdong Province who is visiting next week. I'll report back once it's in hand. He said it is a set of 4 but only got the most advanced for me so I'll be checking out the rest of the set once I see this book.

[gfron1]

A friend bought this for me. This is the level of book I'm looking for. It will help me with my Mandarin lessons, and get better with my Chinese pastry. 

[gfron1]

I am circling back on this topic because I knew there was a culture context that I was missing between my question and Liuzhou's response. My bestie is from Shandong province and he and I have been having an ongoing conversation about this confusion. I share his response:

 

Quote

 

I'm sending you a couple of articles. Hope Google translator can help. From what I understand, Chinese pastry goes wayyy back. But as you can image, it's also been changing and progressing. So by Qing dynasty, it became a common gift people gave to friends and family, and it combined all previous forms and cultures (Qing is ruled by Manchurians, and Han and Mongolian etc). It's always evolving and becoming richer and diverse 

 

Dim sum in modern Chinese refers to bunch of different types of foods, mainly pastry and sweets. This might be confusing, because in the west dim sum refers to those small dishes found in Cantonese restaurants sold on weekends. This usage is much narrower than what it means in China and Chinese language context 

 

this is why I was so confused when i moved to the US 15 years ago, when my white American friends asked me if I ever had dim sum. I was like, what are you talking about? Of course, everyone eats dim sum. Then he goes "let's go to a restaurant for dim sum then". I was, it doesn't make any sense dude. Turns out i had never had the "dim sum" (pushing carts) he was talking about in the English language context, because that small dish dim sum is really just Cantonese foods, which northerners like myself don't consume a lot. And because most early immigrants were from canton area due to California rail road construction etc., so lots of westerners equate their subculture as the whole Chinese culture. So if you ever visit China (anywhere but canton or hongkong), ask them: have you had dim sum? I bet 9 out of 10 would say no.

 

 

The articles he shared are below, both of which Chrome did a pretty solid job in translating for me:

 

http://life.51grb.com/life/2022/09/26/2024320.shtml

https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_9481145

 

So it appears that baking has a long history and even a professionalization back to the Tang Dynasty:

Now I'm more determined than ever to find the books or blogs that explore this history.

 

 

 

[gfron1]

Based on some of the research that led to the last post I bought this book and am so happy I did. The translating is a slug, but there's such a long, rich history of baking told through the lens of molds in China. Here are just a few snips for anyone interested in seeing the beauty of these molds.

[liuzhou]

I have a couple of those moulds*. They are fascinating. I bought them even though I don't bake - just for the aesthetic appeal.

 

*I'd show you them but they are still in "one of those boxes" after moving house in January!

[gfron1]

2 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I have a couple of those moulds*. They are fascinating. I bought them even though I don't bake - just for the aesthetic appeal.

 

*I'd show you them but they are still in "one of those boxes" after moving house in January!

If you ever dig them out I would love to see them. I have a few modern wooden molds, but like everyone else I've been getting into the plastic lately