flatbread – will garden for cake

Recently, I started a new job in a very busy restaurant. Each day, we produce breads and desserts for 3 different restaurants and a bakery. In a few words, I am working my ass off. Honestly, I am a little overwhelmed by the volume and when I get home after my 11-12 hour shift(something else I was not prepared for), I am generally too worn out to think about baking. Since my days off are also split, I tend to spend those days trying to catch up on everything here at home. We have the garden to tend, the chicks to attend to and bees arriving soon. Let’s not even talk about cleaning the house or balancing the checkbook-also on my “to do” list. When I saw that the recipe for this week was matzohs, I thought, “great, a simple recipe to make.” In retrospect, I would rethink that thought. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

Don’t get me wrong, this was not a difficult recipe, just a vaguely written one that really did not offer much in the way of tips or tricks and even though I have a lot of experience to draw from, I was not completely prepared for this dough. The high humidity level in the air did not help either and a few hints might have helped. All in all, it was fun to finally make this recipe and it is one I would make again.
The nice thing about an unleavened dough, no waiting for the rise. The dough mixed up quickly and easily. The recipe calls for the use of sesame seeds and black pepper to flavor the matzohs. Since I am not a fan of black pepper, I chose to change it up a bit. Rather than the 4 tablespoons of sesame seeds, I mixed 1 tablespoon of sesame seeds with 1 tablespoon of poppy seeds, 1 tablespoon of dried onion flakes, 1 teaspoon granulated garlic, 1 teaspoon caraway seeds and 1 teaspoon salt to mimic the flavor of an everything bagel.

The recipe instructs you to roll the dough as thin as possible. Easier said than done. First of all, the use of flour is necessary but you must be careful with the amount. For this recipe, less really is more. You need the dough to be a tiny bit sticky so that it doesn’t slide all over the surface but you also do not want it to stick to the pin. The best tip I can share is to repeatedly roll, lift the dough and flip it and roll again. This constant lifting and flipping will also stretch the dough. The only bad news in this step, you can only roll the dough as thin as the seeds you add to it. But this is also a good thing because if you add the seeds and they are evenly distributed through the dough, they will act as guides for the pin and prevent you from rolling it too thin, which is probably not possible with matzoh dough.

Remember earlier when I mentioned the lack of tips and tricks in the recipe? Well, it would have been helpful to know that the dough will get sticky as it sits, especially on a humid day and sprinkling salt over the top will only make it even more sticky. Another suggestion that the recipe lacks is to do this in stages or with a partner. Rolling all the dough out first seemed like a good plan but it got sticky as it sat. Rolling one sheet at a time and baking it immediately means this will take a long time. Final thought, roll it out, flour it and stack it with paper between each sheet (which I did this time) but do not salt the dough. The final step before baking, prick the sheet and add the sprinkle of salt. Next time….

So thin and crispy, good enough as is or with hummus or knowing my husband, peanut butter. Yes, even with the seeds, he will add the peanut butter.

My favorite part, the dark and toasty spots. The seeds are a close second.

The one hint the recipe did give, the high heat will make the surface bubble and blister. However, despite the high heat of a 550 degree oven, I had to increase the baking time to 1 minute 20 seconds on each side.

Crunch, crunch, crunch…

Want to bake along with the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers? We would love to have you join us! Visit the website and get baking. You will need to pick up a copy of Baking with Julia and/or Baking Chez Moi because we do not post recipes out of respect for the author. To see how the participants fared with this recipe, visit the LYL page.

Middle Eastern bread recipes have long since been an interest of mine and living in Nashville made it easy to learn about them. Our former home was located within the largest Kurdish community in the US and I had an opportunity to visit a small local bakery and watch as the women prepared fresh naan and then baked it in a tandoori oven. It was unsettling to watch as they threw the bread against the sides of the oven using bare hands knowing full well that the temperature was about 700 degrees. The bread cooked so quickly in the high heat that as fast as one loaf was thrown in, it was taken out in what seemed to be less than a minute and it probably was. Slightly spongy and chewy, fresh-baked naan quickly became a favorite of ours and we frequently returned to the shop to buy more. The most amazing thing about that bread was the cost. While you might expect to pay several dollars a piece for the 14″ rounds of bread, you would be shocked to learn that a bag of 3-4 rounds cost less than $3. Sadly, we left Nashville for Williamsburg and our love of fresh-baked naan has become a memory.

Every now and then, I pull my copy of Flatbreads and Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid off the shelf and make a batch of Middle Eastern flat bread in the hope of experiencing the same texture as the naan that we miss. So far, it has been hit or miss, mostly miss but I do not think it is the book’s fault. My kitchen does not have the types of ovens called for in the traditional baking methods and I am usually attempting to utilize various kitchen implements to do the job. While the authors give great suggestions on how to get the described results, I have not had the time to make multiple batches in an effort to find my groove…

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie group chose to make the Moroccan Pebble Bread from Baking with Julia and it just so happens to have been contributed to the book by the authors of Flatbreads and Flavors. Feeling as though I had a little experience with this sort of bread and a familiarity with their recipes, I went ahead and mixed up half a batch-more than enough for the two of us.

You are instructed to use a blend of barley and bread flours and I was surprised to find Bob’s Big Red Mill barley flour in my local grocery store; they sold it with the natural foods. With that first hurdle cleared, I went about figuring out how I would bake the loaves. Our gas range is still in storage awaiting the installation of gas service from the street out front to the house and I have had to learn to cook on a glass-topped electric range. While they may be easy to clean, the glass is easy to scratch and even break so you must know how cautious I was with my cast iron skillet on the stove top. The directions call for an oven safe skillet that you will be moving from the stove top to the broiler for each loaf and I was worried that moving a cast iron skillet around on the stove was a recipe for disaster-pun intended. To preserve my sanity, as well as the glass cooktop, I parked the skillet on the burner and set my baking stone about 7″ below the broiler and gave it a solid preheating. Rather than move the skillet, I moved the loaves from the stove top to the stone using a pair of tongs. It seemed to work fairly well and if I were to make this bread again, I would use this method. The only other note I will make, my dough needed a lot less bread flour than the recipe suggested. Since I was making half a batch, it called for 2 cups of bread flour but my ball of dough used about 1 1/4 cups and since it was so stiff and hard to roll out, I would suggest using a little less next time.

The only thing I did differently, and quite by accident I will add, was that I did not oil the skillet before adding the loaf and since my cast iron skillet is well seasoned, it did not make a difference. As the bread sizzled and steam rose, the bottom cooked quickly and after pressing the surface to make more dimples, in a few minutes I was able to lift the loaf using my tongs and put it on the stone where the broiler could cook the top of the loaf. It went quickly and for the most part, the loaves baked evenly although there were a few spots here and there that the bread was slightly underdone, something that rolling it out the dough thinner will eliminate. Even so, this was the closest I have gotten to achieving a good loaf of Naan-like bread. The texture was slightly spongy and just a little chewy with the dark spots from the skillet and the broiler giving it a wonderful toasted flavor. It won my husbands approval and honestly, mine too.

With summer approaching, I may have to try this one outside on the grill because there isn’t much better than a salad with fresh bread on a summer day! To see what the other bakers came up with, be sure to visit the Tuesdays with Dorie website and look for the LYL page.