Yakitate Japan Ep 46

Monica finishes her bread first followed by Suwabara. At first sight, Suwabara's creation is not comparable to Monica's in terms of the aesthetic appeal but after removing the outer crust, he reveals the actual appearance of the bread which is in the shape of a crown decorated with fruit pieces as the jewels on the crown. In actual fact, this bread is made from two layers of dough. The inner layer, Pane Di Oro which has a high composition of egg yolks and looks yellowish, turns into golden brown after baking. In order to prevent the outer crust from being burnt, Suwabara had used a layer of the croissant dough which makes it easy to remove from the finished product. He had even made the mould of the crown himself. However, there is a final step to complete the bread by brushing a coat of chocolate on the crown to increase the lustre of the bread instead of the fruits (jewels) taking away the attention.

Pierro decides to eat Monica's bread first since she finished baking before Suwabara but she insists on letting Pierro judge Suwabara's creation first. Although Suwabara senses that Monica is up to no good, he has no reason to stop Pierro and allows him to taste his bread first.

After tasting Suwabara's bread, Pierro creates a box and disappears in it. Kawachi comes to the conclusion that this is a Pandora's box where misfortune will befall those who open it. As such, when Suwabara and Monica open the box, a large number of walking cabbages run amok to signify the meaning of trouble. In the end, Suwabara finds Pierro at the bottom of the box and the latter finally stops fooling around to explain what he thinks of Suwabara's creation.

Pierro is full of praise for Suwabara's bread and points that he achieved the glittering effect on his fruits by using honey. Suwabara explains that he followed the German tradition of soaking fruits into honey but Monica rebukes that this would not have resulted in such a lustre. Suwabara clarifies that he had also grinded the same type of fruits and added them to the honey so that the colour and lustre will be enhanced rather than using honey alone.

When it is Monica's turn to be judged, everyone is surprised to find that the rose on her bread has bloomed from the initial bud. Kuroyanagi says that Monica should have added malt sugar to the rose and made use of the room temperature, heat from the bread and warmth from the spotlights to heat up the malt sugar thus resulting in the blooming of the rose. Pierro also remarks that the bread is still feeling warm despite it being finished some time ago.

After tasting Monica's bread, Pierro starts to weep and calls the police to surrender himself for causing public disturbance by releasing those walking cabbages earlier. This results in the police arresting Pierro. Thus, Suwabara and Monica have to go to the police station in order to hear Pierro's judgement for this round.

Kuroyanagi stops Kawachi and Azuma from going in with Suwabara and Monica so that they won't see Suwabara losing to Monica. True to his word, Monica is the victor for this round. This is because she used 5 layers of dough which were put together by using malt sugar. As such, this helps to retain warmth within the bread thus resulting in the rose blossoming. In addition, the use of black wheat for the bread helps to make it tastier than Suwabara's creation.

Suwabara admits his defeat and wants to shake Monica's hand to congratulate her. However, she refuses to do so thus Suwabara grabs her hands and see that they are covered with blisters and burns as a result of handing malt sugar at a high temperature. This makes Suwabara in awe of her and Monica is surprised yet happy to hear his praise for her.

As such, Kawachi would have to win the next round or the Japan team would lose the title...

As what I expected, Suwabara has lost this round and more pressure would be put on Kawachi who has never been expected to do well. Besides that, Tencho, Tsukino and Kanmuri also come to support the team so this should make Kawachi buck up. I'm glad to see Kanmuri again after a long absence. Anyway, there is no way that Kawachi can lose since Azuma has to appear in the final round. The lead character can't be going without airtime, right?