Re:How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better
by timr on Sunday April 13, 2014 @08:11AM
(#7581074)
"You can never get pastries as good as in France for a simple reason: humidity. It influences the cooking process in such a way you can never get the same texture, and your pastry will become soft within hours of cooking because it soaks ambient humidity."
France is a big place. I'm reasonably sure that humidity levels differ between French cities, yet they still make French pastries.
I mean, I get it: you're always going to find some reason to like French pastries better. But "humidity" is a pretty bad reason, since you can actually control it.
Re:How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better
by ekianjo on Sunday April 13, 2014 @10:06AM
(#7581338)
No, this is precisely the explanation that was given to me by pastries making companies based in Japan. I'm not inventing anything. And France never gets 90% Relative Humidity. Check the data. Japan's humidity is way higher.
Pastries in Japan are still quite good, but they can never hope to compare with French ones - they developed their own style and adapted it to Japanese tastes as well, so you can't even expect to get something that has the same taste either, even if it looks alike. And for certain items, you just can't find anything that even matches the supermarket form of it in France : take Pains au chocolat, most of them scream of utter failure in Japan when you bite into them. And I've tried numerous ones, even in expensive bakeries, and was always disappointed.
And let's not forget pastries in Japan are way more expensive than in France. That counts, too.