Black bread – Bamboo charcoal sesame bread

The other day when I was at The Gardens, my kids had some black bread call bamboo charcoal sesame bread at a tiny stall call SBread. The bread was slathered with a lot of green kaya. The two young ones loved the bread because it is black. Just because it looks hellish black, they like it. *roll eyes*

It was my first encounter with a piece of charcoal for a bread. However, when I came back to Penang, I found this type of bread sold by some bakery in Gurney Plaza bakery call Dede. I bought a loaf and thought the kids will still love the blackness.

However, the novelty of eating charcoal bread has worn off. Now, I am left with a small loaf of the blackest black bread. The texture quite nice and soft. I guess they bake the bread the Taiwanese way where they use water during the baking. The outer layer of the bread is soft and not crusty.

I had sniffed around the net and found that the bamboo charcoal is really bamboo made into charcoal, turned into powder and added to the bread. My hubby said it is very much like the ‘lau sai’ black charcoal pills we take when we have loose stools. However, I didn’t eat enough black bread to tell you if the ‘production’ the next day is as black as charcoal though. The bread has a strange flavour and I don’t fancy taking too much at one go. I need to top with lots of pandan kaya to cover the taste of the bread.