Bay 12 Games Forum

Recently, my father has taken up bread-making. A technique he's picked up is mixing in "water roux", a sort of paste used to make the bread moister, which he refers to as "tangzhong". He claims it was invented in Japan in the early 2000s.

This does not sound right to me, on two accounts:

- "Tangzhong", to my understanding, is not a Japanese word. The closest you can get would be something like "tanguzongu". Even Chinese loanwords get either vowels or an "n" on the end.
- It's basically water and flour mixed together in a different ratio than the bread, which is then mixed in. There is no way something that simple is less than 20 years old.

I searched for it, but all I could find were bloggers more concerned about the preparation and eating of the bread than its origin and forum posts parroting third-hand knowledge, which could never agree on an origin--some said Japan, some said Taiwan, I think I saw a Korea claim or two. The most reliable-sounding thing I found was a New York Times article claiming it was "traditionally used in China," which sounds about right; the article is a recipe for a Japanese bread apparently from the 20th century, but I still can't find a rough date for the roux itself. Does anyone know where this stuff was invented and when?

I find this thread most useful when it's something I can't google, either because it's too obscure or I don't know how I'd word the search query.

DF update get hype

I loved it, frankly. I usually hate horror media and am totally uninterested in dating sims, but this was amazing.

Card

200 years into playing the kings of Wessex, some russian woman kinsman takes the throne? God I love british politics.

Reminds me of an England run I did last patch where I started as the Anglo-Saxon Duke of York, tried to get William to beat Harald and Harold, gradually turned my dynasty English, and then eventually usurped the throne. At one point, an extremely distant relative of mine found himself with a strong claim, in Russia. He was Orthodox, I'd never seen him before in my life, and inexplicably, the Prince of Novgorod came after me to press the kid's claim. The Prince of Novgorod didn't own any boats or ports and apparently was trying to get my distant relative on the throne through sheer force of will.

I was doing nothing in particular, sitting around and waiting to build up enough piety and gold to declare a border dispute war, when a gigantic, 8,000 Aquitinian liberation revolt seized all of my land.