Bread Baking Babes in June

A day late, because of a bad headache day yesterday, but fortunately I didn't wait with baking this bread until yesterday, so today I'm posting. Our Babe Elizabeth picked a flatbread to bake for us this month and she asked us to roll up our sleeves and do it all by hand. Sorry, kneaded it with my machine.
The dough was very wet, couldn't get it into a ball to rise/rest, it just was kind of a blob. Lots of flour when streching it into an oval, two were almost too big for my oven stone. Because the dough was so soft, the stripes that I put into it sort of disappeared. We had the breads with some soup. Very chewy bread, but good taste and airy inside. Elizabeth baked them on a bbq, I think that would really be wonderful for this bread, like it was baked in the desert in front of a nomad tent on a hot stone in the fire. If you bake in the oven make it hot and bake on a stone!

Wanna bake this too and become a Bread Baking Buddy? Bake, post and tell us all about it by mailing this to Elizabeth our Kitchen princess of this month, Deadline 29th. Have fun!

Nan e Barbari

(Persian flatbread)

(PRINT recipe)

dough
5 g active dry yeast
360 g water (32ºC)
60 g whole wheat flour
360 g all purpose flour
2 g baking powder
1 tsp salt
nigella seeds (or black sesame, poppy, sesame seeds)

sauce
½ tsp flour
½ tsp baking soda
80 gm water

Mixing the dough: Pour the water into your standmixer bowl. Whisk in the yeast.
Add the flours, baking powder and salt and start to combine the ingredients on low speed until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Knead the dough on medium speed.
When the dough is smooth, shape the dough into a ball and replace it in the mixing bowl (there is no need to oil the bowl). Cover the bowl with a plate and leave to rise to double.

Prepare the sauce: Whisk flour, baking soda and water in a small pot. Bring it to a boil. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

Pre-shaping: Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Scatter a light dusting of flour on the board and gently remove the risen dough onto it. Don't worry that the dough is quite slack. Cut the dough in half. Form each piece into a ball and place well apart on the cookie sheet. Cover with a clean tea toweland plastic foil and allow to rise to double. (about an hour)

Final Shaping: Brush each round with the sauce. Really slather the sauce on. It will keep your hands from sticking to the dough.
Dip your fingers in the sauce and dimple the rounds down to form two ovals with lengthwise furrows. (Please see photos below; also see photos on the right side of this page)
Liberally brush ovals with the sauce once more and sprinkle with nigella seeds. Allow the ovals to stand for about 30 min.

Baking: bake it in a preheated (200ºC) oven with an oven stone for about 30 minutes until golden brown. Cook the bread until it is golden.

(based on Lida's recipe for Barbari Bread at 1001recipe.com)