For two breakfasts I have been serving this chickpea bread to my guests. For those interested, it’s grain-free. For everybody else, it is a rather amazing creation. I have not seen anything quite like that around.
My Kind of Chickpea Bread
Accidental Soviet Rye Bread
Me in Istanbul and my parents in Russia started baking bread at home around the same time. While I approached the matter scientifically and studied one of the most fundamental books in the field, read home bakers’ forums and watched hours of video tutorials, my parents pursued the intuitive path.
How to Make Simit, Turkish Sesame Bread Rings
Here in Istanbul only a few might make simit, sesame-bathed bread rings, at home. But while visiting my parents in Russia it felt like a right thing to do: after all my dad is a simit-addict. When my parents came to Turkey last autumn, dad walked from our Sapanca property down to the village (1 hour downhill and then 1.5 hours back) to combine exercise and purchasing of some simit. Much to his embarrassment he forgot the word and could not make himself clear to a bakkal who would not sell simit anyway.
That’s why my caring husband assumed the duty of finding a good bakery wherever we stayed during our road trip with parents and diligently procured simit every morning. I can’t call most of the simit on the Aegean coast the real deal, but dad felt his breakfast was incomplete without a bread ring or two. No wonder that my impossible-to-excite parent brightened when I announced I would be making simit.
Turkish Countryside Bread
My most favorite part of the workshop we ran earlier this September with Dave Hagerman was the morning we spent at the house of our family friend Crazy Ahmet. It started to rain the night before. In the hills it does not drizzle - it pours with all its fierce, and the sound gets magnified by the giant pine-tree branches, the roofing slate and the fat soil. At 6 am when I came to the kitchen to shape the loaves of the Turkish countryside bread I wore my winter attire - a hat, a fleece jacket and my husband’s winter trainers. I recalled my first - and unexpectedly cold - winter in Sapanca when I was baking a lot, mostly intuitively and still with good results. Now my bread intuition is backed up by the many loaves I made working through Jeffrey Hamelman’s book.
At 7 am people started gathering at the restaurant warming up with the freshly brewed tea, looking through the gray mash that enveloped everything around and still not believing in the garden breakfast planned for today. “Do they have a covered area?” many delicately inquired. It did not even occur to me that something can wrong with our plan. And well, nothing did.
Potato Bread with Roasted Onions
I wanted to talk to you about Turkish breads. Not yet it seems. I had an unfortunate attempt at the chickpea leaven bread when you crash chickpeas, mix them with water and let them sit covered until a dense froth appears on the surface of the starter and the natural yeast forms. It took 3 days instead of 1, so I am trying with fresher chickpeas next time. I also bought a book I was chasing for a long time “Ekmek” (Bread): it was published in a humble series of single-topic brochures with some of the most substantial texts and recipes I have seen on the Turkish bookshelves. I opened the book and - what a scandal! - the author talks European-style sourdough. Really, this country needs more pride about its food and - very urgently - about its bread! So meanwhile I continue meticulously study Hamelman’s Bread. I got the courage to play with the recipe and present one today. Enter potato bread with roasted onions. [click to continue…]
Pain Rustique and Briefly Fermented Thoughts
Lately, I have been going nuts about making bread which means I have to write about it. I first thought it is a completely different subject from anything I have been writing about on this blog, a subject that might deserve a blog on its own. I am afraid, however, there is no way I can have two blogs because I often struggle with focus. I am known for cruelly eliminating a whole bunch of things from my life at once just so that I don’t have to choose one. I can have 36 open tabs in my browser for a week but then shut them down one fine day without looking back. I was spared a failed exercise in blogging megalomania by this simple analysis and you, my dear readers.
Paskalya Çöreği, Greek Easter Bread: Yes Easter!
Everything got little twisted as it usually happens with me: I baked the Greek Easter bread known as Paskalya Çöreği in Turkey for my Orthodox Easter this Sunday morning. I know only a few of you would share the Easter sentiment but maybe you can understand how it feels not to be “normal” most of the time. I blame it on being Russian, being a woman, sometimes on both. Sometimes there is nothing left to blame it on so I take the blame.
My Easter is different from yours, I don’t celebrate Christmas but have all those Christmas delights for the New Year. Take whatever place in the world - I am either not from there or I have left it long time ago to identify with it. I am a Russian married to a Turk: but not that kind of Russian and not that kind of Turk you most likely to know about. I gave up trying to resolve my concerns about all that and have learned to embrace and celebrate my abnormal ways. So why not on Orthodox Easter - April, 15 2012?
