14 September 2010

Chapa bread

When I'm preparing dinner for guests, if I'm serving bread, it's homemade bread.  It's not much effort added to dinner to throw a loaf of no-knead bread in the oven.  It merely requires a bit of forethought.

However, it does require forethought.  And no-knead bread heats up the house more than a little on an otherwise hot day.  A nice pan-bread can be done with little more than a couple hours notice, and you can do it on your grill with a cast-iron pan.  I tried the recipe for chapa bread from Seven Fires.  It's tasty:
4 cups bread flour
1 tbsp kosher salt
2 ¼ tsp dry yeast
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
~ 1 ¼ cup warm water
Mix the dry ingredients well.  Add the oil.  Add the water, slowly, while mixing the ingredients.  Stop adding water when the dough comes together (i.e. when it moves in the mixer as one).

Unrisen dough

Form the dough into a ball.  Place in an oiled bowl and cover with a damp cloth.  Let rise for an hour (or so).

Risen dough

Roll out on a flat surface.

The dough

Cut into 8 roughly equal-sized pieces.

Chop the individual bread

Cover with your damp cloth and let rise for another half hour (ish). Really, these times can be longer or shorter. It's a beautiful thing.

Heat a dry cast-iron pan over medium heat. If you want, you can do this in your kitchen. I found it more amusing to do it over a medium-hot charcoal fire - after all, smoke makes everything taste better.

Chapa bread in the ban

Brown the breads on one side - it'll take about 5 minutes. If it takes less than this, your fire is too hot, and you won't cook the bread all the way through. Adjust accordingly.

Chapa bread in the pan

Flip the bread, and brown the other side.

Chapa bread

Serve when both sides are nicely browned. Serve hot. Upon eating one of these, Mrs. Dude exclaimed that she could eat all 8. Yum.

Chapa bread

Post-script:  My supper tonight was lovely sandwich made from a day-old chapa bread.  I was concerned these chapa breads would make lousy leftovers.  Many breads don't do as well the second day.  However, they were still moist and delicious, though the crust had softened slightly.  The flavour was still toasty and delicious, with a hint of the smoke from the charcoal fire.

1 comment:

* said...

This bread was pretty yummy, also good next day toasted, or untoasted. more chapa bread please!

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