After my friend’s baby shower yesterday, I helped with some relatives and another friend to load and off-load gifts and baby items back at their house. Since her friend had a car and was driving back to Brooklyn, she offered to take me to the ferry terminal so that my friend’s boyfriend didn’t have to drive me. The caveat, she said, was that she hoped it would be okay to first stop at a Filipino market on the island before dropping me off at the ferry terminal.

My friend looked directly at me and smiled since she knew what my reaction would be. “Ummm, YES; I would love that pit stop first! I’m coming in with you!” I exclaimed.

My friend’s friend went in to pick up Filipino groceries as well as takeout (they have a prepared foods section) to bring home to her family. I picked up the pancit, which she also got and recommended, a tray of kare kare (this delicious Filipino oxtail / beef peanut stew), and a bowl of ube halo halo. And while I was perusing the packaged goods aisle, I was beyond ecstatic to find dehydrated ube powder; this was the ingredient I wanted to use to make ube pandesal, but I hadn’t been able to source it at an Asian market until now! This was likely the one item I got from this place that made this trip to the market a thousand percent worth it.

As soon as I got home, I started looking up recipes for ube pandesal. A year and a half ago, I made classic Filipino pandesal bread buns and really enjoyed how simple they were to make, as well as how comforting the flavor was. My next step in my mind was to make the ube version. There are ube pandesal recipes that call for frozen mashed ube, but it seemed like based on the recipes I found that dehydrated ube powder was the most common and preferred way. I also love this packet of dehydrated ube powder I got because there are zero additives in it: it’s 100 percent ube powder with nothing else – no stabilizers, no artificial coloring, no weird thickeners, nada! I had a strong urge when I boarded the ferry back to Manhattan to make bread this weekend.

I decided I’d do the bread recipe that was on the top of my to-make list ahead of my ube pandesal urge, though, which was King Arthur’s big, bubbly focaccia. I started the dough this afternoon, did some pulls and dough turns to develop gluten, and then will let it bubble, grow, and ferment overnight for additional flavor before baking it tomorrow.

This visit to the Phil-Am Market really got me excited to want to make bread again – this was an unintended, unexpected effect of visiting a Filipino grocery store on Staten Island. And now, I have both dry active yeast and instant yeast, so I don’t have to do any conversions for yeast types or worry about whether something will fail based on the yeast type I’ve chosen!