KEEPING IT REAL
THE nice people at the Healthy Food Guide tell me that it has been Real Bread Week in the UK all this week. The UK event may be coming to an end but here in the TRNC every week can be Real Bread Week.
We are very lucky from that point of view, with excellent artisan bakeries in both Alsancak and Çatalköy, each producing a wide range of baked goods. There are also independent bakeries in many villages, such as Ilgaz and Pınarbaşı to name but two, producing traditional loaves and genuine “village bread” is readily available from open markets and most shops. Even supermarket bread is good here and for the most part, we are spared the sort of “cottonwool sliced white” bread that the Real Bread campaign people are trying to entice consumers away from.
With so much good bread available locally, there isn’t any real need to bake your own . . . apart from the fact that it is satisfying (the kneading can be quite therapeutic) and you can tailor the bread to your own particular preferences. Shop around, and you can find quite a range of flours available — rye, oat, barley, wholemeal, corn, gluten-free, etc — as well as instant, dried and fresh yeasts. together the flours, oat flakes, various seeds and salt (if using). Add the yeast and half the water and mix thoroughly. Keep adding water until the mixture comes together into a soft, pliable dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured board and knead for five minutes. Return the kneaded dough to the bowl, cover with a polythene bag and leave to rise for an hour.
Lightly oil a large loaf tin. Turn the risen dough out into the oiled tin and smooth the surface. Put the tin into the polythene bag and set it aside in a warm, draught-free place until well risen and approximately double the size. Depending on the temperature, this could easily take a couple of hours.
Heat the oven to 200°C. When the dough has risen, discard the bag and bake the loaf in the middle of the oven for about 3040 minutes, until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack.
If this size of loaf is too much for you to eat before it goes stale, cut the cooled loaf in half (or even into three). Keep one piece out, wrap the rest well in cling film, seal in a “Ziploc” type bag and freeze until required.
Alternatively, you could make the dough into bread rolls. Prove and bake in the same way as a loaf, but remember that rolls will cook more quickly. Sprinkle some extra seeds on the top before baking if you wish. Somehow my rolls never keep their shape when I bake them “loose” on a tray, so I prefer to prove and bake them in an oiled cake tin as a “crown batch”, with a circle of rolls around the outside and one in the middle. In Turkish, that’s called a “papatya” — daisy — and the baked rolls do look like a bit like a flower.
If all those seeds and flours sound too complicated for you, focaccia is an easy bread to make. It is a type of Italian bread baked from a pizza-style dough and made interesting by the addition of various herbs and flavours. In the south of France, a similar bread is called
fougasse.
First of all, make the 250g plain flour (ideally strong white but I’ve used ordinary local very successfully) 1 teaspoon salt 1 x 7g sachet instant yeast Olive oil 150175ml lukewarm water
Combine the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add a glug of olive oil, then mix in enough water to form a dough. Knead for about 10 minutes on a lightly floured surface until smooth and springy. Enclose the bowl in a polythene bag and leave in a warm place for an hour or so, to double in size.
Once it has risen, knock back the dough by punching it with your fist. You are now ready to add the flavourings. You can add almost anything you want to focaccia. Rosemary with sea salt flakes is a classic, but we particularly like this one, especially made with pimentostuffed olives. 1 quantity Basic Dough 2 tablespoons green olives, sliced 2 handfuls button mushrooms, sliced
1 small onion, finely chopped A handful of basil leaves, shredded Olive oil
Mix the olives, mushrooms, onion and basil into the prepared dough, kneading until evenly distributed. Stretch the dough out into an oval and place on an oiled baking sheet. Use your fingers to make indentations all over the surface, brush the dough liberally with olive oil and leave to rise for an hour.
Heat the oven to 200˚C and bake the focaccia for about 25 minutes, until golden. Remove from the oven, brush with more oil and leave to cool.
And what about something fruity to finish? 200ml hot tea (Earl Grey or rooibos are good) 100g sultanas 100g large (besni) raisins 50g dried apricots, chopped 300g strong white bread flour 300g plan or wholemeal flour 120g butter 20g crystallised ginger, chopped (optional) 100g soft brown sugar 2 teaspoons mixed spice A pinch of salt 1 x 11g sachet instant yeast 2 eggs, beaten
Put the dried fruits into a bowl, pour over the tea and set aside to steep.
Tip the flours into a mixing bowl and rub in the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the chopped ginger, sugar, spice and salt, then add the yeast. Stir the eggs into the fruit and tea mixture, then pour all of that into the flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon until it comes together into a dough. Cover the bowl with a polythene bag and leave in a warm place for 15 minutes.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead gently for three or four minutes, then transfer to a clean bowl, return it to the polythene bag and leave to rise for an hour.
Tip the risen dough out onto the work surface and knead gently for a couple of minutes. Lightly grease a cake tin, put in the dough and press gently into shape. Put the tin back in the bag and leave to prove for another 90 minutes. Meanwhile heat the oven to 190°C.
Bake the loaf for 50-60 minutes until risen and golden. Turn out onto a wire rack and cool before serving with plenty of butter (or slices of mature cheese).