Thursday, April 15, 2010

Flour power

101

This is the result of a recent trip to my local bulk foods market.

Sunday I decided to make my favorite soft flat bread recipe and discovered I was nearly out of white & wheat flour and several other flours. Naturally I did not discover this until the liquid ingredients were all mixed together with the sugar, salt & yeast so I couldn’t just say ‘oh well’ and walk away. I had to come up with something.  The bread ended up being a mix of white bread flour, whole wheat flour, soy flour, oat flour, buckwheat pancake mix, oat bran and some Self Rising flour. (I needed 7 cups of flour because I foolishly was making a double batch)

It was *interesting* texturally.  Not bad, but not at all what I want in my flat bread. Normally I stick with white, wheat and flax meal, sometimes bran.

The market is just down from the boys’ TKD class so I dropped them off Wed and headed over there.

They have these little carts because the aisles aren’t wide enough for bit carts. Mine was overflowing when I reached the register. I bought over 40lbs of flour! (plus 7lbs of raw sugar, a pound of cocoa powder and a half a pound of mini peanut butter chips and 3lbs of butter) I bought 10lb bags of white bread and whole wheat bread flour. I bought a 7lb bag of white AP flour. I bought oat flour, rice flour, buckwheat flour (not pancake mix, which had been an absentminded mistake from my last flour buying trip), and rye flour. I wanted soy flour but they were out of it. I almost bought spelt flour but none of my current bread recipes call for it. I also bought flax meal, wheat germ and oat bran.

I’m probably good for flour until July, though maybe late May on the AP flour.

This is my favorite soft flat bread recipe.

2 teas yeast

1 c lukewarm milk

1 teas sugar

3 tablespoons plain yogurt (at room temp or at least not chilly)

2 tablespoons melted butter

1.5 teas salt

3.5 c flour (It can be all white. I use a mix of 2.5 c white bread flour, .75 c whole wheat and .25 flax meal usually)

Mix the yeast, milk, sugar, yogurt, butter & salt together. Add the flour. Stir together.

Knead for 10 minutes, let  rise 3-4 hours, punch down & let rest 30 minutes.

Divide into 6 balls, roll each out to about 6 inches in diameter.

You can then broil each one for two minutes a side, grill them for 2-3 minutes a side or cook in a cast iron skillet one at a time for about 2 minutes a side.  You want them to be puffy and golden.

They are best served warm with some melted garlic butter brushed over them.

If you double the recipe (as I was doing Sunday) you can, skip the kneading just mix well, let the dough rise for 2 hours then stick it in the fridge in a covered but not airtight container & pull off fist sized balls as you need them. It will keep for about a week.

8 comments:

SciFi Dad said...

That recipe sounds good. I'm going to email my wife to try it (since baking + me = nightmare in the kitchen).

humel said...

Mmm, I like the look of that recipe :-) We don't have any stores like the one you describe - though there used to be a 'Scoop 'n' Weigh' store in the city where I went to university!

Creative Junkie said...

holy cow, stacey! I don't think I've bought that much flour in my life! Ummm ... so I assume you do not stick your flour in the freezer to kill any critters, right? Because otherwise, I'd have to assume you have a freezer the size of Antarctica?

helena said...

thanks for the recipe and love that you buy so much flour - reminds me on my teen years when our kitchen was stacked with big buckets of flour and sugar of various kinds

LizzieMade said...

Wow! You're an enthusiastic baker! I have two or three types of flour in my cupboard - general baking flour (wholemeal) - self-raising and plain (ie.no raising agent) and strong wholemeal bread flour. That's it! I have never bought soy flour, spelt flour or oat flour (have bought buckwheat, to make a - very unsuccessful - batch of buckwheat blinis). Last time I made bread, it was rather a disaster - I used a recipe from a Jamie Oliver book, which called for some very large amount of salt - something like 2 tablespoons. It seemed a lot, but that was the recipe, so I put that quantity in the mix.... eughrrr, yuk! It was like eating bread made with sea-water! Awful! I'm sure they mixed up teaspoons and tablespoons when they were editing the recipes!
I think it's time I made some more bread... maybe I should try your flatbread recipe. It sounds lovely!

Interesting post - thanks for the recipe!

Comfy Mom said...

I'm experimenting with the buckwheat & rye currently, trying to get some more variety into our bread diet. The rest of it it for multigrain rolls and various muffin recipes the boys like. Mostly I just use white & wheat for bread

Comfy Mom said...

This is a really easy recipe since you can cook it in a hot skillet or grill it

Comfy Mom said...

Most of it lives in the fridge to counteract humidity issues. It takes up the whole bottom shelf of the door and half of the bottom shelf in the fridge