Baking Powder Biscuits

One of the things we really want to embrace while we are here is the food.  We do eat Japanese food once in awhile.  I often make yakisoba and sushi rolls, and sometimes we buy gyoza at the store.  Raymond has made curry a few times.  We want to broaden our Japanese food experience even more and try to eat like the Japanese as much as we can during this experience.  This includes eating with chopsticks all the time instead of just once in awhile. 

Raymond has often told me that Japan's flour and other baking ingredients are somehow different than what we have in the states.  While a missionary, he tried to make apple pies to share with some of the people they were teaching.  He said they were good, but somehow didn't taste quite right.

We went to the grocery store our first day here and I found some basic baking ingredients.  Flour, oil, baking powder, sugar, and salt.  These were the biggest quantities I could buy.  I knew that Japanese families were not nearly as big as we are, but it was still a little weird to buy such a small bag of flour when I'm used to buying 25-50 lb. bags to feed my large brood.

 And the milk!  Milk is expensive here.  A quart currently runs at 248 yen.  No gallons around.  We are going to have to ration our milk consumption while we are here.

 With my Japanese baking ingredients, my Betty Crocker cookbook app on my ipad, and my trusty cooking partner Audra Mae (who was very hungry), I attempted to making baking powder biscuits.  The kids love these biscuits and I make them all the time.  I was so curious to see if what Ray had always told me about Japanese flour and such was true.  Would my biscuits here be just as good as at home?

 Got them mixed up and on the pan.  The consistency seemed a little different, maybe a little more grainy.  However, the batter tasted good.  The oven temperature was in celsius, so I had to google the temperature to figure out what to set it to.

 Coming out of the oven, they looked just fine.  Maybe a little more dry than usual, but still o.k.

Set them before the kids, who only had butter to put on them for breakfast.  They did not meet these little people's approval.  Only go two thumbs up and the rest were a side ways thumbs up.  I must admit, I didn't really enjoy them either.  They were o.k., but I didn't want a second one.  Guess we won't have any baking powder biscuits while we are in Japan.  Maybe we will just have rice for breakfast every day like every one else does.  We will have to start wrapping our heads around that and get used to the idea.