Exploring my heritage with Korean poo bread
no, seriously, it's a thing
Hello, my beautiful clowns!
How’s it going? It’s over halfway through May already. And May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. To be honest, it’s always AAPI month for me. I don’t get one second off. It’s hard being the greatest food writer in all of history, as well as being a Pretty Cool Asian Guy, but you know, I do this all for you.
Lately, I’ve been on a huge Korean culture kick, because Davida and I have been watching a show called Vincenzo on Netflix. It’s very hard to classify, but it’s a K-drama with a lot of laughs, twists and turns, criminals, and ass whooping. I am very proud to be of Korean heritage, and it has been quite a ride seeing Korean culture be represented so often in America, especially lately. Frankly, it’s cool as shit to be Korean, and it always has been.
Now, today’s post came about in a roundabout sort of way. Most of you know that my last full time job was that as a pizzamaker, right? I was doing some brainstorming on my own the other week, and had been wondering, What would it take to invent a new kind of pizza?
This was a perfectly honest and innocent question. So I thought, well, great pizza starts on great bread, so maybe I could find a style of bread that hasn’t been pizza-fied yet. So I literally just googled, “list of breads,” and was greeted by a Wikipedia link that was, in fact, a list of breads.
After scrolling through the list, I found a curious entry for a Korean bread called ttongppang. Anglicized Korean can be a little funny; I didn’t recognize the word “ttong” at first, so I clicked through, and discovered a whole new type of bread I’d never even heard of. Turns out the “ttong” that Wikipedia was referring to, was 똥.
똥, for you non-Korean friends, is poo.
I’m 40, and there are new things I learn about my heritage every day.
I could not be more proud. Ttongppang (aka ddongbbang, which is the spelling I would have ordinarily recognized) is a street snack that’s shaped like poo, and is filled with red bean paste and walnuts. How have I not heard of this?!
Turns out poo, in Korean culture, is symbolically a good thing. Fantastic, even. Long story short is that poo symbolizes prosperity in multiple ways, and if you dream about poo, it’s said that you’ll be prosperous. Please take the time to read this piece on Huffington Post, because…it explains everything.
I wonder why my parents never taught me about this.
As far as I can tell, Korean poo bread is pretty much a variation on this walnut cake, a popular street snack.
These cakes are shaped like walnuts, baked off in a mold, and are filled with sweet red bean paste and walnut pieces, like ttongppang. If you live near an H-Mart, chances are you can get these walnut cakes in a little kiosk that sells them, and when they’re fresh, they’re absolutely a delight. Make sure you eat them while they’re hot.
Though I’m not entirely a baker, I looked up the recipe and it turns out that Korean walnut bread isn’t too hard to make.
So I said to myself, “Dannis Ree, self-declared greatest food writer in all of history, you must dive into your own heritage and create your own version of ttongppang, in the best way you know how, by shaping it like actual poo.”
I am the awesomest motherfucker on this planet.
The batter is pancake-ish, and easy to make.
Chances are you have most of the ingredients on hand already: Flour, an egg, baking powder, sugar, salt, and butter. Pretty easy.
I do not own a cast iron poo cake mold, so I went with the next best thing, the Rollie Eggmaster.
This thing is amazing. Basically, the short of it is that you put a few raw eggs in it, and after it’s heated up, it shits the eggs out the top.
If you want to see this thing work, skip to 4:20 (heh heh), and watch the Eggmaster grunt out an eggy crap.
The Eggmaster is one of my prized possessions in the kitchen, and it is easy to see why.
Now, there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to stuff the poo bread in the center in the Eggmaster, so instead, I just mixed everything in.
I added corn, because corn poo is honestly the best poo.
This looks absolutely marvelous, does it not?
Poo cake batter is not super thick, it’s a little runny, not unlike the dump I took yesterday.
It has been years since I cooked with this thing, and I forgot that if you overfill it, stuff will flow up to the top like a clogged toilet.
This mess did not take long to make. So far, so good. I feel prosperous already!
After doing a fantastic job of cleaning up the excess, I let the Eggmaster cook for what I think was about 15 minutes.
This thing doesn’t have a timer, a knob, or any way to control it. Frankly, it sucks, which is what makes it awesome.
Now, in order to get this cake out, I had to use a wooden skewer to release the sides, and after muttering a prayer, I flipped it over and dumped (see what I did there?) out the poo bread.
This turned out better than I could have possibly imagined.
Look at that healthy solid loaf, studded with beans, nuts, and corn. What an absolute unit, as the kids say. It’s like someone pinched this guy out right onto the plate.
I invited our Beanie Baby, Scat, to take a peek, because that only seemed appropriate.
That’s really her name, hilariously. She took a long look at her namesake, admiring this ass-churro’s perfect formation, then looked at me with the highest praise a stuffed animal can, without saying anything.
I tore off a piece and ate it, savoring the flavor of my heritage. It was moist and cake-like, the beans were starchy and sweet, the walnuts were rich and delicious, and the corn was there to remind me that this was one terrific, realistic log, finished with an artist’s master touch (mine).
I felt like I really learned something about my cultural ancestry today, with a big fat bite of poo, and it’s definitely something I’ll dream about. And if I do, apparently I’ll be fuckin’ rich.
You can’t see me now, but I am standing up and taking a bow in front of my stuffed animals. If you learned something today and enjoyed “loafing” around with me, then share the shit out of this on social media, forward it to friends, and don’t slack:
And in the meantime, get yourself a paid subscription. Last week’s subscriber-only content was awesome. I made ants on a log, but with real ants, and the photos are absolutely magnificent. I even fed some to a dog.
You can access it and all the other previous paid content on foodisstupid.substack.com, and you’ll be in an elite group that gets exclusive releases, like perhaps, say, Korean poo bread pizza? You know you want to support the greatest food writer in all of history, which honestly, doesn’t pay much.
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Love you all, and talk to you soon.
what about the new kind of pizza??? i need it!!