Bánh Mì

Vietnam's baguette of wheat and rice flour, shatteringly thin-crusted and hollow, filled with pâté, cold cuts, pickled carrot and daikon, coriander and chilli

Origin: Saigon & Southern Vietnam

From the journey of Wheat.

Bánh mì means, strictly, the bread: bánh is a broad word for cakes and things made of flour, and mì is wheat, so the name distinguishes wheat bread from everything Vietnamese baking otherwise does with rice. The filled sandwich took the bread's name only later, and in Vietnam a shop selling the loaf plain and a stall selling it stuffed both use the same two words. The loaf is not a French baguette and the difference is structural. Vietnamese bakers use a softer, lower-protein flour, frequently cut with rice flour, and bake hot and fast with a great deal of steam, which produces a shell that is thin and shatters rather than tearing, and an interior that is almost hollow, with a thin web of crumb round a cavity. That hollowness is the point: the loaf holds a great deal of filling without becoming heavy, and it is a bread designed to be eaten in the hand walking. Wheat came into Vietnam as a colonial import under French Indochina and was for decades expensive and associated with the coloniser's table. What turned it into street food was the shift of the loaf out of the bakery and into the hands of vendors who filled it with what a Vietnamese kitchen already had: pork terrine and cold cuts on the French side, and on the Vietnamese side pickled carrot and daikon, coriander, chilli, cucumber, and a slick of Maggi seasoning, which arrived with the French and stayed. The usual attribution for the filled sandwich is to Hòa Mã, a shop opened in Saigon in 1958 by Lê Minh Ngọc and Nguyễn Thị Tịnh, who had sold French charcuterie and began putting the components inside the bread so customers could carry it. The claim is repeated widely and the shop is still trading, though whether they were literally first is not documented; what is not in dispute is that the form is a Saigon one and that it spread from the south. The word entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011.

Ingredients

Bread

400 g strong white flour
100 g rice flour
7 g fast-action dried yeast
2 tsp caster sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ascorbic acid powder, or the juice of half a lemon
340 ml water, lukewarm
1 tbsp neutral oil

Pickles

1 large carrot, julienned
200 g daikon, julienned
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp caster sugar
150 ml rice vinegar
150 ml warm water

Filling

150 g coarse pork liver pâté
4 tbsp mayonnaise, preferably egg-yolk rich
300 g Vietnamese pork roll and cold cuts, sliced
1 cucumber, in long thin batons
2 bird's eye chillies, sliced
1 large bunch coriander, in sprigs
2 tsp Maggi seasoning or light soy sauce
0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Method

Make the pickles first: toss the carrot and daikon with the teaspoon of salt, leave for twenty minutes, then squeeze them hard and rinse.
Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar and warm water, pour it over, and leave for at least an hour. They keep for a fortnight refrigerated and improve after a day.
For the bread, mix both flours with the yeast, sugar, salt, and ascorbic acid, then work in the water and oil to a slack, sticky dough.
The rice flour and the ascorbic acid are what give the thin shell and the open, nearly hollow crumb; ordinary baguette dough gives a chewier loaf that fights the filling.
Knead for eight minutes, cover, and prove until doubled, about an hour and a half.
Divide into six, shape each into a short torpedo about 20cm long with tapered ends, and prove on a floured cloth for a further hour.
Heat the oven to 230°C with a heavy tray on the bottom shelf and a baking stone or upturned tray on the middle.
Slash each loaf once down its length, slide them onto the hot surface, and throw a cup of water into the tray below.
Steam for the first eight minutes is what makes the crust thin and crisp instead of thick and leathery; open the door as little as possible.
Bake for eighteen to twenty minutes until pale gold and hollow-sounding, then cool completely.
Split each loaf along one side without cutting through, and pull out a little of the crumb if it is dense.
Spread pâté on one face and mayonnaise on the other, lay in the cold cuts, drained pickles, cucumber, and chilli, pile in the coriander, shake over the Maggi and pepper, and press the loaf shut.

Notes

Squeeze the carrot and daikon dry before they go into the vinegar, or the pickles turn watery and the bread goes soggy. Steam matters more than temperature for the crust. Rice flour keeps the crumb light; without it the loaf is simply a small baguette. Warm the finished loaves through in a hot oven for three minutes before filling, which is what every stall does and what makes the shell shatter. Coriander goes in as whole sprigs and in far greater quantity than seems right. Maggi seasoning is not a substitution for soy in Vietnam but the thing itself; use it if you have it.

The Gastrographer

Name: Bánh Mì
Prep time: 3 h 40 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 4 h 30 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Saigon & Southern Vietnam
Ingredients: 400 g strong white flour; 100 g rice flour; 7 g fast-action dried yeast; 2 tsp caster sugar; 2 tsp salt; 1 tsp ascorbic acid powder, or the juice of half a lemon; 340 ml water, lukewarm; 1 tbsp neutral oil; 1 large carrot, julienned; 200 g daikon, julienned; 1 tsp salt; 3 tbsp caster sugar; 150 ml rice vinegar; 150 ml warm water; 150 g coarse pork liver pâté; 4 tbsp mayonnaise, preferably egg-yolk rich; 300 g Vietnamese pork roll and cold cuts, sliced; 1 cucumber, in long thin batons; 2 bird's eye chillies, sliced; 1 large bunch coriander, in sprigs; 2 tsp Maggi seasoning or light soy sauce; 0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control