Thanks everyone

I have just discovered your website and so far I have been very satisfied with your kitchen tested recipes, with special mention on Putong Ube, Maja Blanca.

Please do me one big favor – Please ask ms. Betty Q. to post her recipe of Cuchinta (I prefer the rice powder recipe to flour). I have been craving for a good cuchinta here in Dubai, but could not find one that tastes like that from home.

Pleeaase…

“paolo says:

Maria Clara, You just wrote the “hidden gem” in puto making. The LEVADURA or the MOTHER YEAST which my mom calls Mother Liquor, added to the new batch and given time (a couple of hours) to ferment before the steaming process.

My guess is, one needs a week of fermenting the rice flour mixture to obtaining the LEVADURA. I suppose, the process is similar to SOUR DOUGH recipes.

Filipino ingenuity or something passed on from generation to generation?

Worth a try for the Die Hard puto makers.”

Traditional puto making is synonymous to sourdough baking very common in the US up to now and in the olden days when no commercial yeast was available. Im sure you have heard of San Francisco Sourdough Bread. Sourdough baking notably creates better tasting breads and this is also true with puto. Breads baked using sourdough and rice cakes/puto produced using levadura/sourdough has a distinct smell, texture and taste not found in commercially produced ones.

I can imagine the smell now and it makes me hungry, for a puto lover like me im telling you, its heavenly!!

The wild yeast present in the levadura/sourdough apparently is sensitive to weather/temperature and acidity of the fermented slurry/galapong..Yes, we deal with acid-base reaction in puto making and puto making has always been an art, but my knowledge of chemistry and microbiology being a biologist by education allowed me to understand the science behind puto making. I have yet to hear successful (with all the desirable quality of the traditional puto we all know) puto making by people based in temperate countries.

Yes, we try different means to make our galapong slurry to rise during cool/cold months of the year (all traditional puto makers try different tricks to salvage a batch of puto that hasnt risen well or hasnt risen at all, but normally, reviving a batch of puto that hasnt risen bec of a bad levadura/sourdough (caused by temperature and/or acidity) is almost always impossible). Its always heart breaking whenever cooler months come and you end up with bad puto (hard and chewy). Believe me, temperature plays a big role in traditional/fermented puto making.

As for the ube, someone should try this with the ube from Bohol which has a more intense color. Though food color may make it better looking, I still think going natural is better. This idea just popped into my mind a sec ago, how about mixing ube with beets? I think I’ll try this before Christmas and let you know how it went