Pork Belly Banh Mi with Crispy Baguette Recipe #loveasianfood

Hey, what's up? In my opinion, a well-made banh mi should be an all-out assault of fresh, contrasting flavors all packaged in a super crisp, unbelievably light French-style bread. Today, I'm going to show you how to make the specific style of baguette that this sandwich needs to be great, along with everything else, including some pickles and a super secret sandwich sauce that makes this so much more than just meat on bread. To get started, the first step would be to grab some pork. I've got roughly three pounds of pork belly here. I'm going with pork belly because it's incredibly juicy and succulent, and it pairs perfectly with all the pickles and herbs and other fresh, crunchy stuff on this sandwich. This pork belly came skin on, and I don't really want to mess with cooking that properly today because it's kind of complicated, so instead, I'm going to cut this pork belly into two smaller pieces and then carefully zip the skin off of the meat. If you don't think you can find pork belly, just go ahead and use pork shoulder. I'll link in the description to a video where I show how to make a slow-roasted pork shoulder that I think is very easy and very good. Next, I'll hit both pork bellies with a liberal dusting of salt on both sides. You'll notice that I'm not using anything additional here to season these up like sugar or garlic because, in my opinion, the final sandwich is full of powerful, fresh flavors, and I don't want to get in the way of all that nice contrast. Once these are all salted up, I'll situate them on a wire rack and then move them over to a 300F, 150C oven to roast for roughly three hours. While those cook, I'm going to start the dough for my baguette, but I'm going to wait like an hour before I do that so that the pork is out of the oven later on when I'm ready to bake the bread. So, 60 minutes after the pork went into the oven, I'll grab my stand mixer and into the bowl of that, I'll add 380 grams of warm water, 12 grams of instant yeast, and yes, that's a lot of instant yeast, by the way, because I want this baguette to have the volume and lightness of a mass-produced baguette. Next in is 22 grams of sugar, 525 grams of bread flour, and 12 grams of salt. Now, the dough hook goes on, and I'll mix this on high speed for about 6 to 8 minutes. After 6 to 8 minutes, this dough should be tightened up into a nice, clean ball that's clearing the bowl like this. To check the strength, I'll kill the mixer and give it the good ol' trusty tug test, and it's looking pretty good. It shears just a little bit at the end, and that's okay, I don't want to overmix this. I'm going to be folding it later on. So for now, I'll flip it into a medium bowl and then round the dough into a nice, tight little ball. For that, I'll move from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock while tucking the dough under as I rotate it, and there we go. Now, I'll pop on a lid and ferment this for two hours, but I'm going to check back in one. 60 minutes later, when I come back to do that strength-building fold, you can see that that extra yeast is really doing its job. Since it's so gassy, before I fold it, I'm going to punch it down to degas it a little bit. Then, to do the SBF, I'll grab a grip of the dough, pull it out until I meet resistance, and then fold it back over. I'll repeat that 4 to 5 more times, and then I'll finish with the same 10 to 2 rounding tucking move that we started with to get the dough turned into a nice, taut little ball. That looks good. Now, the lid goes back on, and I'll come back in 60 minutes to shape. After two hours of total fermentation time, when I check back, you can see this dough is just about where it was 60 minutes ago. It's nice and puffy, and now it's ready to shape. I'll flour the dough, then my board, then I'll flip out the dough. I'll grab my gram scale, and then I'll cut the dough into 6 equal-sized pieces that are about 150 grams a piece. Once I've got the dough cut up into 6 equal-sized pieces, I'll pre-shape it. For that, I'll grab a slab, then lightly degas it. I'll pull out two sides, fold them in, flip it over, and then I'll roll it up into a tight, but not too tight little ball with the seam tucked underneath like this. Now, before I shape these, they need to relax for about 15 to 20 minutes, so I'll cover them with a damp tea towel, and I'll check back then. When I come back to shape these, I'm going to grab my baguette pan. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of designing recipes around a singular piece of gear like this, but the perforation on the bottom and the round grooves create a really unique aesthetic to the bread that I think is essential. It kind of mimics the mass-produced baguette vibe that I'm going for because it's going to have a soft bottom and a nice, crusty top. You certainly could do this with only a sheet tray, by the way. I'll link to my beginner baguette video in the description where I do just that. Now, to shape these baguettes, I'm going to lightly flour the deck, then flip over one of my doughs. The side it was sitting on should now be facing up, and after some aggressive degassing here, I'm going to use my fingertips to roll this into a nice, tight little cigar shape. I'm rolling this back about a half inch at a time and pressing that roll into the dough to create tension. I'll do that about seven to eight more times, and when I'm at the bottom, I'll use my palms and fingertips and thumbs to taper and tighten the ends. And that looks pretty good. With that said, the dough should be pretty forgiving to shape here, and even if you miss the perfect tube, that baguette pan will hold things in line for you. Once I've got six of these shaped up and panned up, I'm going to cover them with a damp tea towel and then move them off to the side to proof for about 45 minutes. While those rise, let's check back on the pork. It's been slow roasting for about three hours now, and as you can see, the fat is just about fully rendered out, and when I check it with a fork, it's almost shreddable. It looks perfectly tender and very succulent. Look at it drip. For now, I'll set these off to the side to rest and cool down while I preheat my oven to 400F, 205C to bake the baggies. On the inside of the oven, I've got my pizza steel set up, and below it, I'm going to add my cast iron pan. I'll preheat those two together and check back when the bread is fully proofed in 30 to 45 minutes. In the meantime, I'll thank Verb Energy for sponsoring this video. You guys know I'm a little snack dog, right? Hey, snack dog! 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So to try Verb Energy, use the link in my description with code BRYAN at checkout for $10 off your variety pack. That's 15 bars for $15. These things are vegan, gluten-free, and only 90 calories each, so go ahead and eat two if you're feeling kind of wild. Again, that's promo code BRYAN for $10 off your variety pack. 45 minutes later, these baggies are all puffed up and ready to bake. I know that because when I poke them, they just barely bounce back like this. Next, I'm going to score these things. So for that, I'll grab my lame. If you don't have one of these, use a serrated knife. You'll just have a slightly more rustico look. And now, on a diagonal, I'll slice one, two, three, and then the rest. By the way, scoring dough that's room temperature is always kind of hard to get perfect, so don't sweat it if you snag the lame. Lastly, before I load these to bake, I'll grab a water squirter and then heavily spritz the baggies so that they spring higher in the oven. The water evaporates, creating steam, and that not only changes how the starch on the outside gelatinizes, but it delays crust formation and allows the bread to rise a lot higher. Once I've got these loaded into the oven, I'll immediately take a kettle of boiling water and pour that into my cast iron skillet. As you can see, a ton of additional steam is created here, so I'm going to scoot that back in as quickly as I can and close the door to trap it. And from here, I'll bake these for 30 to 35 minutes, depending on your oven. After 35 minutes, these are starting to take on a nice, toasty, golden brown hue, so I think it's time for removal. Now you can see that this is a different animal than a rustico artisanal baguette. This is sandwich bread at heart, and it doesn't need to be baked super dark or have thick crust. The bottom of the bread is blonde and soft, almost like Jimmy John's bread, and that sounds like it would be a bad thing, but it's exactly what we need. Trust me, it's going to be very good. Now to gild the lily here, I'm going to bring a final touch of shine to these by brushing them with some melted butter. Yes, the water is going to soften the crust a little bit, but I've got a very specific move later on that is going to help us achieve ultimate perfect crustiness. Now let's get down to business and start building this sandwich. The pork is now at room temperature, it's about an hour later, and to get it sandwich ready, I'm going to cut it into roughly three quarter inch slabs across the grain like this. Cutting the meat once it's fully cooled keeps all the succulent porky juices and all the fat inside of the meat. Take a look at the cross section too. We've got meat, fat, meat, I know that middle part looks like just fat, but there is meat in the middle there. It's just light colored, and then more fat and then more meat. Now I'm going to get a little nonstick pan preheated over medium heat so that I can crisp up this pork belly for the sandwich, and then I'll preheat my oven to 425F. While those preheat, let's talk about the toppings. I've already got my two pork bellies sliced up and ready to go over here. Next to that I've got some plain mayonnaise for general purpose sandwich glue and lubrication. Then some fresh de-stemmed mint leaves, some fresh cilantro, and I've got some fresh cucumber that I've julienned into strips. I prefer long strips because it fits into the sandwich a lot better than say a coin of cucumber, and it's what I've seen done in a lot of videos of Vietnamese street banh mi's. I've also got some thinly sliced fresh jalapenos here, and most importantly in my opinion I've got some pickled carrots and daikons. To make this mixed pickle, I'll need one large daikon radish. If you're not familiar, it's a large format Asian radish that tends to have a little bit more water than the French breakfast ones that we're used to. Asian or not, all radishes kind of stink when they're pickled, and in this case that's a good thing. That cabbage-y funkiness is a main character in this sandwich's overall flavor, and it cannot be missed. To break this down, I'm using my trusty julienne style peeler. I highly recommend you get one of these, but if you don't have one, use a knife and do it freestyle. I need 150 grams of this radish in total. I'll also do the same to a large carrot, about 150 grams, and once I've got both of those shredded up and combined, I'll grab a small saucepan and into it measure 200 grams of water, 100 grams of rice vinegar, 100 grams of white distilled vinegar, 40 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of salt. I'll drop this pot onto the stove, and as soon as the sugar and salt are dissolved and the liquid is boiling, I'll take it off the heat and pour it over my shredded roots. I'll push that down to make sure everything is fully submerged, and I'll let these cool and pickle for at least 4 to 6 hours, but preferably 24. These are going to stay good in the fridge for about 4 to 6 weeks, and they will get only funkier and more farty smelling. That sounds weird, but trust me, it's going to be perfect in this sandwich or on a fish taco or on an Asian style salad. Oh, one more topping. This brown stuff that I've got here is what I would call sandwich juice. A lot of the street banh mi vendors that I've seen put some sort of funky, sweet, sour juice on the banh mi right after they finish filling them up. To make it, I combine equal parts lime juice, brown sugar, fish sauce, and sambal style chili paste. It's about 2 tablespoons of everything, give or take. I stir it to combine, and there we go. A little bit of this stuff goes a really long way, but trust me when I say that it makes a big difference in terms of the final sandwich experience. One last note on the bread. These have been cooling for about an hour now, and they've lost most of their original crispiness. That's totally fine and to be expected. I've got a move coming that's going to bring them back to full, brittle crispness in just a second. For now, I'm going to drop a few slabs of my sliced pork belly into that hot non-stick pan. I'm looking to simultaneously warm these back up while also searing the outside and getting them nice and crispy. After about a minute, I'll come back and flip these little bb's over and check out the color that they've taken on. They look really good. We don't need to sear them super hard because too much might dry them out, so after maybe one minute on each side, I'll take these out of the pan and set them aside for sandwich building. Now, to build this sandwich, I'm going to grab one of my baggies and slice it open on one side. I'll pull it apart a little bit and tear up the inside to create a nice, deep pocket for all of my stuff to fit into. I don't want to cut too far because that's going to create more of an open flap situation than a pocket and everything will fall out. Once I've got a nice little cave in the bread, I'm going to layer in about four to six ounces of this seared, crispy belly. In this case, that's about three slabs all kind of shingled on top of one another. Once they're snugged up, I'm going to drop the meat-bread combo into my 425F oven to refresh and crisp up for about two to three minutes. This last little blast of high heat is going to re-crisp this bread and evaporate any humidity that might have been absorbed during the cool-down. When I take it out, you can hear how brittle and crisp it is. Next, I'll lube up the inside of this sandwich with a touch of regular mayonnaise, then in goes eight to ten strips of that fresh, juicy cucumber. Behind the cukes, I'll sneak in a few fresh jalapenos, throttle this up or down based on your toughness level with chilies, I think four to five slices is plenty, and then I'll drop in a couple large pinches of the stinky, delicious, sweet, crunchy carrot daikon pickles. Behind the crunchiness here, I'll add in some fresh herbs. That means cilantro and then some fresh mint. Lastly, I'll drizzle in two to three generous tablespoons of that salty, sour, sweet sandwich juice. Go liberal here because it really ups the contrast and keeps things wet. And that's going to be a very pleasurable sandwich to eat, you guys. The bread here is exactly what we need. It's super brittle and crisp on the outside, but it's soft and dumb and yeasty on the inside, making it so easy to chew. The pork inside is succulent as hell, and it's held in perfect balance with the full-on assault of all the other fresh flavors here. Every bite is like a new journey. You get some mint, some cilantro, you get a bunch of pickles, and then, ooh, I think this one is very achievable at home, and I think you should try it yourself. If you're from Vietnam, by the way, let me know in the comments how I did. Let's eat this thing.