Bake a purse! BBB in June

Another month with another Middle Eastern recipe for the Bread Baking Babes to bake; thanks Karen ("Bake my day!") for this lovely choice. The fun bread shape looks like a purse and is meant to carry around after buying it from a street cart in Lebanon that sells these. You can bake them yourself and please feel free to parade in your house and/or street! Bake these in a weekend and eat them for dinner or take them on a picnic! Bake with us, taste, post about them en sent your details and findings to Karen (bakemyday(at)gmail(dot)com) and become our Bread Baking Buddy!! Enter before the 30th of this month!

Kaak bread (a Lebanese bread with sesame seeds)

(makes 6 large Kaak)

(PRINT recipe) 

dough:

235 g milk

230 g water

2 TBsp olive oil

1 ½ TBsp sugar

1 ½ tsp salt

1 TBsp instant dry yeast

135 g whole wheat flour

490 gr all purpose flour, you may need a little more, but don’t add too much flour

Topping:

1 egg for egg wash

1 TBsp sesame seeds per kaak

You will also need lined baking sheets

Mix all the dough ingrdients in a standmixer bowl and knead it until souple dough. What you'll be looking for is a malleable non-sticky dough.

Shaping; divide dough into 5 parts of 200 g (or make smaller ones about 100 g each) and ball up. The last part of dough will be smaller, but you add all the cut out circles to that one, so it’ll be about the same size. Let rest to relax and using a dough pin roll each ball into a circle approx. 18 cm diam., about 1 1/2 cm.

Place the shaped breads on lined baking sheets, be careful not to stretch the dough. Use a large cookie cutter to cut out a circle near the top to form the "handle". and loosely cover to rise another 25-30 minutes. Add all the cut-out circles to the last smaller piece of dough and shape this one like a purse without cutting a whole (make a hole with your finger and carefully open it up. Or do it as it’s done in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdxMY-53pMU )

Egg wash the breads, sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake for ±15-18 minutes or until golden and puffed in a pre-heated oven 200-220°C. I think they will benefit from a bit of steam in your oven. Use your preferred method; either ice cubes, boiling water in a heated pan... bake on a stone...

Let them cool on a wire rack. You can eat them like they are or make a horizontal slit in the bottom part of the purse, which you can fill with whatever your fancy.

We stuffed them with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and some vegetable "sausages"