Our next Bake! pick was chosen by Andrea, and she picked Ekmek, basic Turkish flat bread. This was made with NM's basic Middle Eastern flatbread dough (bread flour, salt, yeast, water, and olive oil). The dough was extremely wet and hard to handle, but once again proved to me the power of the stretch-and-fold. When it finished mixing, I had to basically pour it into the bowl. After twenty minutes, I scraped it onto a lightly-dusted counter and gave it a stretch-and-fold...instantly I could see and feel the dough strengthen.
Although NM says not to let the dough rise for too long, there was no way I could make the bread in one day with the teaching-coaching-momming schedule, so I stuck the basic dough in the fridge. This afternoon, I pulled it out and continued with the rest of the Ekmek recipe: preshape the loaf, let it rest, stretch it into a long oval, dimple it, and bake. It worked out perfectly, even with the overnight rest.
I served the bread with our favorite Indian-spiced chicken with tomato chutney, and I haven't seen a meal disappear off the table that quickly in a long time!
As a sidenote: I was a little confused because the basic dough recipe says "makes enough for several flatbreads," but the ekmek recipe says "use one batch of basic dough, makes one loaf." I ended up using a full batch of the basic recipe to make a large ekmek loaf, and the pictures look just like the book, so I think that I made the right choice!
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| Happy Halloween from Smaug the Dragon and Bob the Builder! |
Wow that bread look amazing, you did a great job with it, and thank you as now I will know what it is supposed to look and act like it when I get around to tackling this one. That dinner sounds great to me. Smaug and Bob are so cute!
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to try making Turkish bread, but have never found a recipe I liked. I'll look out for this one, thanks Abby!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't seen the back view of Smaug before--so cute. =) The bread looks good, too, of course. =)
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