Anime

What makes this one fun?

I am not about to sit here and type that this series is really special and stands far above its peers. However, my favorite aspect of this series is the ensemble cast. The series does a good job of balancing humorous character interactions between cast members while keeping an overall story moving ever forward. There are later arcs in the series that I think suffer compared to the early part, because they break apart the cast as the MC is traveling on a journey.

Aqua

This is another great comparison. I went with Akko due to the Trigger connection, but all of these characters are absolute gold mines of reaction faces. Looking forward to another Konosuba season this year.

Shokupan vs. Pain au Lait

I haven't made pain au lait before, but have had it before (in Quebec rather than France). Looking at recipes, the main differences are that the Japanese version is less sweet and uses milk powder rather than liquid milk. The sweetness of pan au lait helps explain why it is usually just served as rolls rather than a loaf that is used for things like toast/sandwiches. However, both have a pretty airy, but close crumb. This is likely due to the fact that both doughs are beaten to within an inch of their lives.

The shokupan recipe I use has a minimum of 15 minutes of very high speed mixing with a dough hook, and this pain au lait recipe I found lists a similar 15-20 minutes. This extensive kneading breaks down the gluten to a point that large air pockets just aren't able to sustain themselves in the cooked bread leading to a lot of air trapped in very small pockets within the bread.

Sorry, I realize now that I spent way too long on this one, but I really like making bread. I think I will try to make some pain au lait next time!