Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Persian Naan
April 5, 2016 at 12:02 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 8 CommentsTags: baking, bread, savory
This Persian Naan flatbread from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid uses the very same dough as the Oasis Naan we did almost four years (what the –??) ago. So I’ve kinda done this one before, but it’s been a while. The dough is actually as simple as it gets– water, flour, yeast and salt. One proof, then shape and bake. The book instructions call for making it by hand…last time I used the food processor…this time I used the KitchenAid…do what you like and rest assured that it will all be good.
The dough bakes up nice and puffy and chewy. It didn’t brown so well on top, so I brushed a little melted butter on at the halfway point and gave the naan an extra couple of minutes in the oven to get a bit of golden spotting. This was a nice bread to have with our Sunday morning fried eggs and avocado. It kind of reminds me of the grocery store Turkish pide bread that I fell in love with when we lived in Oz, but can’t get here.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. There’s also a video of Alford, Duguid and Julia making the bread together, and the authors wrote this article that gives more naan tips. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Pita Breads
August 18, 2015 at 6:55 pm | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 6 Comments
Homemade Pita Breads are something that wouldn’t normally be on my baking radar. I admit that most pitas from the grocery store are half-stale and fall apart when I split them, but I do live within walking distance of a shop called Damascus Bakery, where I can (and do often) get great pitas that are fresh made. Those pitas in the picture are actually ones I made a couple of years ago, back when we did Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas, a recipe that used the same dough as its base.
This was a pretty easy bread dough to make (and apparently, it can even be made a week ahead and kept in the fridge till you’re ready to pita). It does use a sponge, but by now that no longer feels like an advanced technique. The recipe gives instructions for mixing the dough fully by hand…I of course cheated and used the mixer. You can bake the breads in the oven on a stone, as I did, or there are instructions for cooking them on a griddle on the stove-top. In the middle of August, the latter may have been the better choice! These puffed up really well and have a good pocket for tuna salad for lunch or a fried egg sandwich for breakfast. They are also perfect for warm pita and hummus snack, obvi, and since they’re about half whole wheat flour, they have real flavor.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. There’s also a video of Jeffery and Naomi making the pitas with Julia. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Ka’kat
May 5, 2015 at 6:57 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 11 CommentsTags: baking, bread
¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Maybe you are getting a tres leches soaking or quadruple checking a mole recipe to make sure you didn’t miss an ingredient. If you are thinking about flatbreads today, you’re probably thinking about tortillas, but put Ka’kat on your radar for later. I had never heard of ka’kat before, but Dorie says they are a very typical Eastern Mediterranean street food. You can find them everywhere apparently, just like soft pretzels here in New York. They’re made with a really straightforward yeast dough. If you make it in the morning after breakfast, you can easily have fresh, warm bread snacks by lunchtime!
Although this is another recipe in the flatbread section of the book from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, my ka’kat (at least) came out round and chubby. With sesame seeds on top, they did not look unlike mini bagels. Ka’kat are often flavored with ground mahleb (also mahlab), which are little tiny cherry kernels. This spice has a bit of that bitter almond flavor and is used in Middle Eastern, Greek and Turkish baking. You probably won’t find it at your standard grocery store, but you can get it online (at Penzeys, for example) or in a Middle Eastern market. I found whole seeds at Sahadi’s here in Brooklyn (I love that place!) and ground them to powder in a spice grinder. All that said, the mahleb is totally optional. It gives a very subtle aroma and taste, and I always like to buy an interesting new ingredient, but you can leave it out, no probs.
These were so tasty warm and soft from the oven. I ate four– no kidding! But they are little, yeah? I dipped them into olive oil and dukkah (like I did with the Pebble Bread)…they’d be good with salty butter, too. I made half a recipe and divided the dough into fifteen ka’kat to fit neatly on one sheet tray. I have about half of them left in the freezer and I’ll definitely warm them up a bit before eating them.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
TWD BWJ Rewind: Pebble Bread
March 30, 2015 at 12:34 pm | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 4 CommentsTags: baking, bread
A couple of weeks ago, the group made the Pebble Bread recipe from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, world travellers who have brought us a few other flatbreads you may or may not remember. I was all geared up to make this one, and then I didn’t. Sometimes I just run out of gas. Thankfully we get a make-up week every now and again.
Pebble Bread is a round Moroccan flatbread; traditionally baked on hot pebbles, it gets dimply and a little puffed. The not-so-traditional Western method we used here involves a bowl of water, your fingertips, and a heavy skillet…first dipping a rolled out dough round into water to create steam, next quickly dimpling it with your fingertips, then starting the bread in a skillet on the stovetop to cook the bottom, and finishing it under the broiler to cook the top.
I only made half a recipe (four large-enough-to-share pieces of bread) and since I used two skillets and they take just a few minutes each to cook, I worked though the process pretty quickly. Of course I totes torched the top of my first one under the broiler, but, just like my morning toast, it was nothing a little scrapey-scrape with a serrated knife couldn’t fix. You learn, eat your mistake before anyone else sees it, adjust and keep going.
I’d call these a definite success. I can’t roll pie dough into a nice round to save my life, but these breads all rolled out into perfect circles. They had just enough puff and chew, and a good flavor from the overnight sponge (yes, you need to plan to make a sponge the day before you make the bread, but it’s virtually hands-off) and the barley flour in the dough. I have a couple breads left in my freezer and I am very happy to eat all of them warm, ripped up and swiped first into olive oil and then into dukkah (which is actually an Egyptian nut and seed mix, but we found it all over the place when we lived in Australia, and ever since I must have it on a regular basis).
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll to see if anyone else did a rewind this week, and see the links page from the Pebble Bread a couple of weeks ago!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas (& Pitas)
August 6, 2013 at 3:39 pm | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 9 CommentsTags: baking, bread, savory
Lord knows I’m not above making a pita pizza from time to time, but usually it’s out of sheer convenience (and sometimes out of desperation). Before Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas, I certainly wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of making my own pita dough for one. Not that it was a hard dough to make or anything, but like any yeast bread, it does take time.
The topping for these pizzas is lamb (although I used ground turkey) sautéed with onions and garlic, tomatoes and pine nuts. Mine wound up a little on the dry side, probably because I used cherry tomatoes, which didn’t give off much juice. I tried to jazz up my finished pizza with some feta and chopped scallions, but if I make it again, I’ll make sure the topping has just a touch of sauciness to coat the meat.
The bread dough has a fair amount of whole wheat flour in it, which gives it a slightly nutty taste. The recipe calls for baking individual pizzas, but I made a double-sized one instead and baked it on my pizza stone.
Since I had to make pita dough before I could make the base of my pizza, I went ahead and made some actual pita breads with it as well. And then we had warm pita and hummus snack. I was quite pleased that my pitas puffed enough to get a pocket– my husband initially didn’t believe that I made these, as I always get my pitas at the great Damascus Bakery here in Brooklyn. The next morning, I took my last homemade pita, opened its pocket, and made a fried egg sandwich out of it. Tasty!
We’re going without hosts now for TWD, so for the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. There’s also a video of Jeffery and Naomi making the dough and pizzas with Julia. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Oasis Naan
June 5, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 32 CommentsTags: baking, bread, savory
Phew…I cut it close on this one. I just made Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Oasis Naan a couple of hours ago. Luckily it’s a pretty simple bread dough, as long as you have the time to proof it.
The recipe calls for making this flatbread dough by hand. I’m lazy…I used the food processor, same as I do for pizza dough. (I must say here, that I only made a half batch of dough, so everything fit just fine.) I started by adding the minimum amount of flour to my processor bowl, then with the machine running, I poured in my water/yeast combo. I added more flour to touch and turned off the machine for 10 minutes. Then I sprinkled the salt and a little bit more flour over the dough (because it still felt pretty sticky) and turned it back on for a few more seconds. I kneaded it on the counter for about a minute before putting into a bowl to proof.
The dough bakes up nice and puffy (be sure to dock it well!), and chewy, too. I topped mine with chopped spring garlic and za’atar spice, but I bet all kinds of things would be good on top. You could even make them like mini pizzas. It’s not quite as soft and charred as the naan I get from my local Indian takeaway, but I’d make this again for sure.
We ate our naan with a freekeh, beet, chickpea and feta salad I concocted. Very healty…I think my husband thought the naan was the best part!
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Maggie’s Always Add More Butter and Phyl of Of Cabbages & King Cakes. There’s also a video of Alford, Duguid and Julia making the bread together, and the authors wrote this article that gives more naan tips. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Daring Bakers in November: Tender Potato Bread
November 26, 2007 at 12:00 pm | Posted in daring bakers, events, savory things, yeast breads | 60 Comments
Ahhh…finally, today is the day when I can reveal my experience with the latest Daring Bakers challenge– it is something I really look forward to every month. This go-around Tanna from My Kitchen in Half Cups had us roll up our sleeves and bake bread! She chose a recipe for tender potato bread from Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour & Tradition Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. This is a book I have on my own shelf, so I was extra-excited to give the bread recipe a try.
Besides being true to the base recipe, we had to knead the bread by hand (I hadn’t done that in forever!) and it had to be savory. But other than that, Tanna really encouraged us to play around with the shape of our bread and the flavorings used. I did cut the recipe in half, which is my usual MO, because R and I can’t (or shouldn’t) eat sooo much bread. I used the maximum amount of mashed potato suggested by Tanna (16 ounces for a full recipe, or 8 ounces for my half recipe), and I can say that kneading the dough was definitely a sticky process. But it wasn’t impossible on a well-floured surface…as the additional flour was worked in, I could feel the dough gaining structure and becoming easier to handle.
I split my dough into one small loaf and one small focaccia. I kneaded some grated aged cheddar and cracked pepper into the loaf portion just before placing in the pan for its second proof. The cheese bread was soft and had great flavor. I still have half the loaf in my freezer, just waiting to be eaten with a bowl of soup. The dough made for a fantastic focaccia as well– I put olive oil, olives, rosemary and Maldon salt on mine. It had a nice, crisp bottom crust from baking it on a ripping-hot pizza stone.
Thanks Tanna for giving us a good break from the sweet stuff. If you are afraid of yeast, don’t be– bread-baking is a truly satisfying experience! You won’t believe how delicious warm homemade bread is! If you want the recipe for the basic potato bread, look here on Tanna’s site.
And before I go, I’d like to wish a very happy birthday to Daring Bakers! This not so-little-anymore group turned one this month. Started by Lis and Ivonne, just two buddies wanting to make their own pretzels, the group is now more than 300 strong! To see how we all interpreted this month’s potato bread challenge, take a look at The Daring Bakers’ Blogroll.
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