Yep - the bread used for banh-mi is of excellent quality. The French influence can also be seen the pate, truly one of the worlds great sandwiches and a gift to the world from Vietnam.
Do we have reason to believe that PastTense is still a student? I always though he was in his 40s.
Agreed. If I am going to treat/punish my gluten-intolerant self, it must be with a bahn-mi. Well, half a one. a whole one really does punish my gut. But YUM!
They, however, improved on it by using layers of contrasting colored doughs, producing a striped effect. They referred to the result as “shimapan”. 
Looking for my chicken ascot now … :dubious:
I believe bread, or breadlike foodstuffs, are almost universal in human cultures, the main exceptions being those which don’t cultivate the right kind of plants, either because local conditions make grain cultivation impractical or else because they don’t practice agriculture at all. I think I can safely say that there’s little if any bread in traditional Inuit culture, for example.
Mongolian cuisine makes use of small flattish bread rolls, which you fill with the BBQd meat and veggies. I’ve had them both at a restaurant in NZ as well as several locations when in Xian in China, so assume it’s not a Western invention only. But other than steamed buns and dumplings I’m not familiar with in in any other Chinese cuisine.
You a very very naughty! You need a spanking!
The two are not mutually exclusive, you know.