Lohah

If you've read the early posts of this blog, you'll know that at one point I made, from scratch, 90% of my family's bread products.

Today, I went to google the name of a specific flatbread and I stumbled upon lohah, the Djiboutian/Somali/Yemeni bread that is a cross between a pita and a pancake.

I felt inspired. I scanned some recipes from the Internet and decided to have at it.

Phase one: the dough

Ingredients

• about 2 teaspoons yeast

• about four cups warm water

• a hearty squirt of honey (about two teaspoons sugar of whatever form-- you want to feed the yeast)

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• about 1/2 teaspoon salt (I got fancy and used my pink Himalayan salt)

• about four cups flour (I used organic, unbleached Gold Medal that I found on clearance at Target for $2.94 for a five pound bag; I read this should be made with sourgum flour which I have worked with in the past. My friend said it requires millet.)

Now, this is a fermented dough. You stir it up and leave it sit. At least 30 minutes. I'm aiming for 2 hours. I covered it with a dish towel, dampened with warm water and set it near the cracked oven door. The oven had been 350 degrees previously. I'm trying to mimic the warmth and humidity of East Africa.

I let it rise two hours, and it presented with some fabulous volume.

At this point, the directions said to stir as a form of kneading. I did so, pleased to find a great blobby, elastic texture. Volume fell by about 1/3 at this point.

The next rise will be about an hour. I'm winging it. 

Mine got really stringy-- fry until bubbly and mostly dry on one side and cover the pan for a little bit more to finish.

Edible kitchen disasters

So my friend has rhubarb in her yard. She harvested and passed it along and I thought I'd make Smitten Kitchen's super easy strawberry rhubarb oat bars. And I didn't notice I didn't have strawberries. Or any fruit. Except for home canned apples. So I used those. 

The real recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2014/05/strawberry-rhubarb-crisp-bars/#more-11831

Just remember: never skimp on sugar with rhubarb

But my real goal today was to delve into Somali cuisine. (Someone in this house is pining for Djibouti.) So, I thought I'd try a recipe or two off The Somali Kitchen.

Comparing my photo to the original it seems I didn't do too badly:

www.somalikitchen.com/my-blog/2014/02/somali-polenta-flat-bread-muufo.html

My first few batches burned. I had the heat too hot. I should have heated the pan on high and reduced to medium as soon as the batter went in. I used two frying pans-- a non-stick egg sized skillet and my cast iron Le Creuset. The non stick yielded more consistent color whereas the Le Creuset was more prone to burn.

Bâtard and quince

A few more weeks and my last full semester at Lafayette will end. My daughter is drowning in her phlegm and her ear tubes are falling out. Target opens at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving. We're still barely making ends meet.

But hey, no sense complaining. This is life.

Today I stopped at Wegmans because my poor daughter wanted ice cream and I'm restricting her dairy right now because of her allergy/ear issues.

I got her coconut milk cookies and cream ice cream.

She also wants to cook dinner tonight so I got vegan ravioli, one butternut squash and the other roasted red pepper. She suggested ravioli for the meal.

I also got salad greens and Health is Wealth Pizza Munchees which are also vegan.

And sushi. Because I can't make it through Wegmans without a serious impulse buy.

I also got bâtards, a small type of French bread, because I've craved a bâtard with butter and quince jam for months. A few weeks ago, I discovered Lebanese quince jam at the Mediterranean Deli. Imagine my delight when I found bâtard bread today. The flavors bring me back to Tunisia.

I also made myself a smoothie of vanilla maple yogurt from Klein Farm, frozen pitted dark cherries, a fresh banana and a splash of sour cherry nectar from Turkey. (Another find at the Mediterranean Deli.

My belly celebrates.

Tuna sandwiches

Today's lunch:

Tuna on the multigrain bread I made yesterday with local greens from Klein Farm. Sweet potato fries with dip made from 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt, 1.5 tablespoons Pennsylvania maple syrup, 1 teaspoon honey and 1 heaping teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon.

Multigrain Batter Bread

This recipe is adapted from the Betty Crocker 25th Anniversary cookbook.

I needed to use up some unsweetened vanilla almond milk that my daughter did not like, so I opted for bread over waffles or cinnamon buns.

I will post the original ingredients first and list my adaptations (which made the recipe vegan) in parenthesis.

FOUR-GRAIN BATTER BREAD
(mine is not four grain)
- 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I used unbleached white, and I substituted 1/2 cup whole wheat flour into the mix)
- 2 tablespoons sugar (okay, now the vegan way I would do this is agave nectar, but I also use local honey since I am not vegan)
- 1 teaspoon salt (I use fresh ground sea salt)
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 packages yeast (I don't use the packages. I have a brick in the fridge. I used about 2 tablespoons)
- 2 cups very warm milk, 120-130 degrees (I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
- 1/2 cup very warm water
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (I used rye)
- 1/2 cup wheat germ (I used Bob's Five Grain hot cereal)
- 1/2 cup quick cooking oats (I used regular)
- 1 1/4 cups more white flour
Cornmeal, olive oil

Mix the first set of flour, the sugar, salt, baking soda and yeast in a large bowl. Add milk and warm water and stir (with wooden spoon) until moistened.

Stir 3-5 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients (not cornmeal or olive oil) until it forms a stiff batter.

Grease two loaf pans and dust with corn meal.

Divide batter between them and shaped with floured hands. Cover and let rise 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400. Bake 25 minutes until loaves are golden brown. Cool on wire racks.

White veggie French bread pizzas

This is a family favorite.

Ingredients
- a crusty bread (today I'm using Archer Farms roasted garlic and herb baguette)
- butter
- vegetables (tonight I'm using California blend and extra broccoli, frozen, prepped in the microwave)
- Italian seasoning
- extra virgin olive oil
- provolone

Instructions:
- preheat oven to 400 or 424
- slice bread, spread with thin layer of butter
- place on cookie sheet and toast for about five minutes
- melt about one tablespoon butter, mix with one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil for about every four pieces of bread, about 6" long and 2" wide
- place desired veggies on bread, spoon olive oil butter sauce evenly over them
- sprinkle with Italian seasoning
- toast another five minutes
- cover each pizza with 1/2 slice provolone
- return to oven to melt cheese

I served with a side salad. Lots of veggies tonight!

Archer Farms Garlic Herb baguette

I recently told my family I had to start baking bread again. At the same time I had a craving for garlic bread.

So I tried this.

Less than $3, a fairly large baguette. And a nice amount of herb and garlic flavor. I'm serving with soup.

Archer Farms Mocha Breakfast Bread

Target's Archer Farms Breakfast Breads have a new flavor: Mocha. These breads are on the pricy side, around $3 a loaf, but a slice of toast or a peanut butter sandwich on these desserty breads can do wonders for the spirit.

We've already tried blueberry, apple fritter and berry muesli, so when I saw "Mocha" I had to try it. Chocolate with a hint of espresso.

1 slice has 3 grams of protein, 120 calories, 1 gram saturated fat, 135 mg sodium (which sounds like a lot, but the Sara Lee 100% whole wheat my father-in-law brought has 100 mg a slice. I need to get making bread again), 1 gram fiber, 8 g sugar (hence why I call it part dessert, 2% RDA calcium, and 6% iron.

These breads can also liven up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Most of the varieties do contain milk products.

Toast is one of my favorite meals, so you can see why I adore these.

Margez

One of my favorite parts of travel to the Arab sections of French cities and to North Africa is lamb sausage, Margez.

This particular platter posted is from a café in the Tunisian resort city of Sousse, about 2.5 hours by train from the capital city of Tunis.

What's interesting about Franco-influenced Arab cuisine is the flood of bread with every meal, even more prevalent than in France. The North African region gives a basket of baguette slices its own twist-- by serving it with the chili pepper paste known as harissa blended with olive oil.

See the empty bowl in the background with red smears? That was harissa.

My travels have renewed my interest in checking out the halal butcher in my neighborhood.

Bread stuffing

This is my third year hosting Thanksgiving at my house. And despite this, somehow, I have never posted the Betty Crocker recipe for stuffing.

Usually, I make homemade bread for my stuffing, but this year I bought white bread from Bottom Dollar because it was cheap. Last night child and I watched an episode of Ugly Betty and ripped bread into cubes.

We have about 16 cups of bread.

BETTY CROCKER STUFFING:
- 3/4 cup butter
- 1 1/2 cups chopped celery with leaves (I omit, I hate celery)
- 3/4 cup finely chopped onions (I hate onions so I usually use chives from my garden that I froze)
- 9 cups soft bread cubes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground sage
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Heat butter in Dutch oven over medium- high heat. Cook onions and celery for two minutes. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients.

Now, I'm going to probably use done fresh parsley that I froze from my garden as a substitute for celery. I have that country herb blend that I will probably use instead of straight thyme. But I won't mess with sage, because that's the key to that real stuffing flavor. I will mix fresh and dried, though.

Cranberry orange bread

I decided to modify my cinnamon raisin bread into a cranberry orange loaf. I started with the Traditional White Bread from my 25th anniversary Betty Crocker cookbook.

CRANBERRY ORANGE BREAD
- about 2 cups whole wheat flour
- about 5 cups unbleached white flour
- 1.5 tablespoons local honey
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 teaspoons (or did I use a tablespoon?) yeast
- 1 cup triple sec, heated (plus more for bowl)
- 1 1/4 cup warm water
- 1 cup raisins and craisins

Mix the wheat flour and 2 cups white flour with the butter, salt, sugar, honey and yeast. Add liquid. Stir thoroughly with wooden spoon.

Add fruit and enough remaining flour until the dough is elastic and not wet to the touch. Need ten minutes.

Sprinkle light amounts triple sec into the bowl (straight from the bottle), and drop the dough in. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise for about an hour.

Now, my house is always low so I preheat my oven to 200, turn the oven off and open the door and let most of the hot air out. Then I put the dough in and close the door.

The dough is ready when it doubles in size. Push a finger in and if the indentation remains, it's ready.

Knead again. Grease two loaf pans. Divide dough in half. Make rectangles, roll them tightly and then tuck the ends under. Put them in the loaf pans.

Preheat oven to 425. Cover dough and let rise 30 minutes. Until they double. I place my loaf pan on the burner where the oven exhausts so that hot air will keep it warm.

Bake 15-20 minutes until the top is golden brown.

Mini burgers and canned goods

I made cinnamon raisin bread and multigrain bisquits today.

So for dinner my husband made little slider burgers while I made a side of fresh steamed broccoli.

We opened bread and butter pickles and firecracker carrots from our canning session with Gayle at the end of July.

Tomato Herb Foccaccia

Most of the world tends to gush and rave about garden fresh tomatoes. I'm not a huge tomato fan, so I don't get that kind of crazy but I will say it's not worth having any tomatoes unless their fresh from the garden.

So when I get tomatoes, I made foccaccia.

This is my foccaccia post from two summers ago and I don't deviate much since it's a family favorite.
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/07/foccaccia.html?m=1

Today's ingredients:
- garden tomatoes
- 2 cups garden fresh basil
- 1 tsp yeast
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 1 tsp local honey
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup rye flour
- papa john's seasoning
- zaatar seasoning
- Italian seasoning
- salt
- extra virgin olive oil
- corn meal
- Parmesan reggiano cheese

Combine warm water, honey and yeast. Stir with a non metal spoon and set aside 15 minutes.

Add 2 tsp olive oil and a pinch of salt to the developed yeast mixture. Add half the flour, stir. Add another cup. Stir. Add desired dry seasonings. (in my case today: Italian seasonings, papa john's seasoning, and zaatar.) begin to knead (10 minutes total), adding the remaining cup of floured needed.

Form dough into ball. Pat down with olive oil and leave covered to rise until double, about 90 minutes.

Grease a large cookie sheet and dust with cornmeal. Punch dough down and press into pan. Cover again and let rise about 30 minutes on top of the stove while the oven preheats to 425.

Poke finger indentations into crust. Brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with zaatar and shreds of fresh basil. Add sliced tomatoes. Coat with more oil. Sprinkle with more zaatar and cheese.

Bake about 30 minutes

"Mommy, I want a sandwich."

My daughter requested a sandwich. A sandwich is not your run of the mill item in this house. I try to oblige.

The pasta is leftover pesto tortellini.

The fruit is something from the Easton Farmer's market. It has a skin like a peach, is shaped like a small gourd and has white interior. Daughter loves them IF I peel the fuzzy peach-style skin off them. They also have a pit like a peach. Last time, she picked something similar, but it had an orange interior and the texture and flavor of a plum.

The sandwich is my homemade honey oat bread, with a slice of cucumber, two slices of deli counter ham (another oddity in this house) and a squirt of Goddess dressing.

Bratwurst, sweet potato fries & pesto toast

Tonight was another rush home after day camp kind of day.

I got a loaf of my honey oat bread from the freezer. Once that thawed, I sliced and slathered with butter and coated with a generous layer of yesterday's pesto. I toasted these in the oven while the sweet potato waffle fries cooked.

Then I sprinkled them with the six Italian cheese blend from Target. And toasted some more.

I fried up some bratwursts and we ate the meat on the pesto toast as open-faced sandwiches.

Honey Oat and Rye Herb Bread

It's a bread day! I started a basic French bread starter and have decided on a honey oat and a herb rye loaf. I divided the starter in two for the first rise and prepped two batches of add-in flour, one that's unbleached white flour and oats, another that is stoneground rye and a touch of brown sugar. I'll add blackstrap molasses to that loaf during the first knead.

I never make a loaf the same way twice, rather always adding a lil of this or that. Like this day:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/07/great-day-for-bread.html

Today's loaves came out fantastic! I rolled them thin and long (very French). The white bread came out boring, really, but the spinach-herb-rye bread was super enjoyable.

I've been trying for two days to find the basic recipe so I can try and chronicle my deviations (as if I remember now) and finally here it is (with an adorable photo of my daughter in her seersucker train engineer/baker hat): http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-bread.html

So, facing a 90 degree day after a heat wave of 100 degree days, I got out my bread bowls. In the first very large bowl, I mixed:

• 4 cups unbleached white flour
• about 2.5 teaspoons fresh ground salt.

In a smaller bowl I put:

• 2 cups stoneground rye flour

and set beside it:

• blackstrap molasses
• about one cup fresh spinach
• 1 heaping tablespoon parsley
• 1 tablespoon dill 
• 1/4 cup sorrel
• about 1 cup basil

In another smaller bowl, I mixed:

• 2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1 cup whole oats

In the final large bowl, I mixed:

• 3 cups warm water
• 2 tablespoons yeast
• 2 tablespoons honey

From the flour/salt bowl, I added about 3 cups of the white flour to the liquid yeast mix. I worked it into a dough and let it sit until it tripled in size. Cover with a towel or plastic wrap. It's supposed to take three hours. Mine took about two.

This is what I'll refer to as my starter dough. After it rose, I took the dry ingredients from the rye bowl and poured them onto my lightly floured work surface. I added half the starter dough and mixed. I added the herbs and the molasses as I kneaded. Then I divided the kneaded lump into two pieces, oiled lightly and returned it to the rye flour bowl and another bowl. Covered with a towel to rise.

I repeated this with the rest of the starter and the white/oat flour. Knead. Divide. Oil. Cover. Leave to rise.

Let sit until doubled in size. About an hour.

Preheat oven to 450. Divide into loaves. Let rise 20 more minutes. Place a bowl of water in the oven. Bake baguettes for 15 minutes, remove bowl of water. Cook baguettes for ten minutes more, maybe less. *I often turn mine when I remove the water, helps the consistency of the crust.

Or I leave the water. Because it's hot and dangerous. Sometimes they cook quickly.

Naan

I've been craving Indian food. I researched making naan and while I haven't attempted it-- apparently it requires yogurt-- here are some interesting web pages on the topic:

http://foodformyfamily.com/recipes/how-to-make-naan-in-the-oven

http://mideastfood.about.com/od/breadsrice/r/naanrecipe.htm

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/naan/detail.aspx

Rosemary rye bread

Bread dough and tropical tortoises love heat and humidity. So, today, as temperatures soar toward 100 degrees farenheit, I will make rosemary rye bread.

Here is the link for the first time I tried to make French country bread:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/04/french-country-bread.html

Today, I did a typical me. Started the recipe without reading all the directions and double-checking my ingredients. I ran out of white flour.

My sponge:
- 2 cups warm water
- about 1 teaspoon local raw honey
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 2 cups unbleached white flour
- about 1.75 cups stoneground rye flour

Stir. Cover. Let rise at least two hours. Preferably six. Possibly overnight.

Now, I measured out my flour and had
- two cups unbleached white
To which I added
- four cups rye
- about three teaspoons chopped rosemary from my garden


From here I pretty much followed the original recipe although I added extra herbs leftover from my chicken salad. This recipe combines the sponge with a dough (more yeast, salt, sugar, etc) and then rises again. [See the link listed above.] Shape and let rise again.

Because I ran out of white flour, my final rise didn't have as much ooomph as I would have liked, despite leaving the dough on the steamy sunporch. It was dense but yummy.

Backyard picnic!

Today's weather was refreshingly warm and happily sunny. With my fresh baked zaatar foccaccia (that the sunflower seeds fall off of, when will I learn to knead these items into the dough), it felt right to wash off my little café table and ask hubby to grab a bagged salad and a bottle of Vouvray on the way home.

What else says summer-ish than cold French wine, Dole Asian Crunch salad ($12.71 for the wine and $3.99 for the salad) with homemade bread dipped in cold pressed extra virgin olive oil?

The whole meal would have been vegan if it weren't for the egg yolk-- I'm not sure if it was in the ginger sesame dressing or the Asian-style noodles.

Zaatar foccaccia

Ever since my bout with anemia last summer, making bread has become a chore. Because of this, gradually I have made less and less bread. But, today, with zaatar spices in hand, I wanted to make bread again.

Among my first summer entries, you can find a garden herb pesto/fresh tomato foccaccia that is a family favorite. I adapted this from a recipe from VegList, a veg*n email loop I belonged to in the dark ages before Yahoo groups.

Today, I have transformed that basic foccaccia into a zaatar and sunflower seed variation.

The DOUGH
About 1 teaspoon yeast
1.5 cups warm water
Mix and let rest 15 minutes.

Add:
1 pinch fresh ground salt
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup unbleached white flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rye flour

Stir with a wooden spoon.

Add another cup white flour and a little wheat flour.
Add a handful of flax seeds
Add a handful of roasted sesame seeds

Kneed.

Coat with olive oil and let rise abot 1.5 hours until doubled.
Lightly oil and flour a big cookie sheet.
Press out the bread.
Brush with oil. Coat with liberal zaatar and sunfloer seeds.

Let rise another 45 minutes. Bake at 425 for 25 minutes.