Too Much Food » Flatbreads

“Lotus Pad” (Mandarin) Pancakes

Pinjing — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:12:46 +0000

I’m back in Taiwan! (I’ve blogged my first meal here). I won’t be doing much cooking or baking (there’s too many good things to eat and try here). I do have a few recipes queued up that I haven’t posted yet so I’ll work on that as well as posting about all the things I eat while in Taiwan . . .

This is another recipe I tried from the Wei-Chuan Chinese Snacks Cookbook way back in June for “Lotus Pad” (Mandarin) Pancakes. If you’ve ever been to a Chinese restaurant and ordered mooshu pork (a sort of “burrito” stuffed with a chopped pork, cabbage, wood ear mushrooms, bean sprouts and shredded egg filling), you’ll recognize these as the flatbreads that are used as the wrapper.

What’s interesting about these flatbreads is the technique employed to make these pancakes super thin: you must roll them out and cook them in pairs. After you finish cooking them, you peel them apart to get two super-thin wrappers (ideally they will be very thin; obviously I need much more practice). Give it a try!

“Lotus Pad” (Mandarin) Pancakes

Adapted from Wei-Chuan’s Chinese Snacks Cookbook

Makes 20 pancakes

What you’ll need:

2 1/2 C (300 g) all-purpose flour
3/4 C (180 ml) boiling water
1/4 C (60 ml) cold water
1 T (15 ml) sesame oil

The procedure:

In a large bowl, add the boiling water to the all-purpose flour and mix until you have a rough dough. It will be dry at this point, so don’t worry about obtaining a smooth dough.

Add the cold water to the rough dough and knead until smooth. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and set aside for 20 minutes to let it relax.

After 20 minutes have elapsed, remove the dough from the plastic wrap and knead it again, on a lightly oiled surface so that it is smooth and elastic. Shape the dough into a long roll approximately 20 inches long, then cut into 20 pieces, each 1 inch wide.

Place the sesame oil in a small bowl and have it ready on the side.

To shape the pancakes: For each piece of dough, and using the palm of your hand, flatten it until into a round, approximately 4 inches in diameter. Dip your fingers in the bowl of sesame oil and lightly oil the top surface of each pancake. Place two pancakes together, with the oiled sides touching, and roll them out until they are 6 inches in diameter. It helps to try to pair pancakes that are similarly sized. Repeat 9 more times to form 10 pairs of pancakes.

Preheat a griddle or skillet over medium-high heat, then lower to low heat and and dry-fry the pancakes for approximately 30 seconds, or until small, golden bubbles appear on the bottom. Try to keep rotating the pancakes with your fingers to fry them evenly. After 30 seconds have elapsed, flip the pancake over and repeat the same procedure, rotating the pancake and checking the bottom for the tell-tale golden bubbles.

Remove the pancake from the pan and gingerly separate the pancakes from each other. I am warning you, they will be hot, so be careful! Place the separated pancakes on a plate and cover with a kitchen towel to keep them warm and moist.

Mandarin pancakes are slightly chewy but not tough; the use of sesame oil also make them lovely and fragrant. They’re also really versatile; use them in conjunction with your favorite mooshu recipe, or anytime you need a tortilla-like flatbread. My mom liked smearing them with peanut butter, rolling it up and enjoying it for breakfast.

Enjoy!

My Comfort Food: Black Sesame Shaobing / 黑芝麻燒餅 (Taiwanese Flatbreads)

Pinjing — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:57:25 +0000

Taiwanese breakfasts have always fascinated me. As a Taiwanese-American born and raised in the US, I grew up eating stuff that most of my other classmates probably ate for breakfast: sugary cereals, poptarts, toast with peanut butter or jelly and the like. Once in a while though, my parents would take my sister and me to a tiny restaurant near our house that served traditional Taiwanese breakfast, which usually consisted of a steaming bowl of either a savory or sweetened version of soy milk (the savory version is the type I prefer, which comes garnished with small pieces of Chinese crullers (油條), chopped scallions, pickled vegetables and a dash of vinegar), potstickers, panfried turnip cakes, egg turnovers and fan tuan (a sort of roll made up of fragrant glutinous rice stuff with pork floss and a Chinese cruller). What my sister and I really craved, however, was the uber-Taiwanese breakfast of shao bing you tiao (燒餅油條). What is this, you ask? Let me enlighten you.

Take a shao bing (a flaky, sesame coated flatbread of goodness), split it open and stuff it with a you tiao (a glorified deep-fried breadstick). Close it to make a carbalicious sandwich. Eat as is, or dunk it in the soymilk and stuff your face. This ain’t no Atkins-friendly breakfast here.

Sounds weird (carbs with carbs? It’s like making a french fry sandwich!) but trust me, it’s delicious. So when I was perusing and old Chinese cookbook that my mom had and saw a recipe for these flaky flatbreads, I knew I had to try it.

Black Sesame Shaobing (Taiwanese Flatbreads)
Adapted from Wei-Chuan’s Chinese Snacks Cookbook

Makes 20 flatbreads

What you’ll need:

6 C (720 g) all-purpose flour
1.5 C (354 ml) boiling water
1/2 C (118 ml) cold water
3/4 C (177 ml) roux mixture
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 C (60 ml) sesame seeds
For the roux mixture: 1.5 C (365ml) flavorless oil (such as vegetable oil) and 3 C (360 g) all-purpose flour.

The Procedure:

Prepare the roux mixture: In a saucepan, heat the 1.5 cups of oil until hot. Add the 3 cups of all-purpose flour and stir to mix well. Cook the mixture over low heat for 10 minutes until the mixture is fragrant and lightly golden. Make sure you’re standing at the pan at all times as this can go from golden brown to burnt very quickly!

Set aside the roux mixture to cool.

Meanwhile, let’s continue on with the rest of the recipe, shall we?

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

Place the flour into a mixing bowl and add the boiling water and cold water all at once and mix well. Knead the dough until it becomes smooth and elastic.

Using a silicone mat (or a lightly oiled surface), roll out the dough until it measures a 16″ x 16″ square.

Evenly sprinkle the surface of the dough with the roux mixture, salt and 1 tablespoon flour. Roll up the square tightly ina jelly roll fashion and cut the roll into 20 even pieces (you may have to roll it back and forth a bit to stretch it out to a workable length). For each piece that you cut, pinch the ends together to make sure none of the filling spills out.

Here’s where you shape the pieces and obtain the “flakiness” that characterizes these flatbreads. It may be a bit tricky as I’m not the best at explaining how to shape the flatbreads, so I’ve provided a sort-of step-by-step tutorial to help:

For each piece, place it on the board, such that the pinched edges are on the sides. Take a small rolling pin or dowel, and holding it horizontally, place it on the lower 1/3 of the flatbread.

Roll away from, so that the flatbread is about 4 inches square.

Fold the lower third of the square up to the center.

Then fold the top third down over that (if you’ve ever made croissants or any other laminated dough, this will start to sound familiar).

Now rotate the dough piece 90 degrees so that it’s vertical.

Again, holding the rolling pin horizontally, place the rolling pin now at the vertical center of the dough piece and just press down (don’t roll).

Lift your rolling pin and fold the top half of the dough over.

Dip the piece of the dough, smooth side down, into the sesame seeds, pressing lightly, so as to get the surface fully covered in seeds. Place the dough, sesame seeds side down, on your board and roll out into a 6″ x 3″ rectangle.

Transfer to baking sheet with the sesame side down and repeat with the other 19 pieces.

Bake the breads on the cookie sheet, sesame seed side down for 5 minutes, then flip the breads over and bake them for another 5 minutes or until they are a nice golden brown. They should puff up slightly.

These breads are flaky, crispy on the edges and tender on the inside due to the roux mixture and “quick” laminated dough technique; the traditional way of enjoying these flat breads for breakfast is to stuff them with crispy chinese crullers (you tiao or 油條) and eat with sweet or savory soy milk. In Taiwan they also stuff them with thinly sliced roast beef and scallions (called 牛肉燒餅) and is equally delicious. But it’s up to you; on the rare occasions that my mom bought these from the Chinese supermarket, I was really fond of splitting these open like English muffins and filling them with peanut butter and jelly in my Taiwanese version of the PB&J sandwich. If you do make these, leave a comment as to how you enjoy them . . . I’m always looking for new ideas.

Note: While my version of these flatbreads use black sesame seeds, white sesame seeds are used traditionally. My mom informed me that flatbreads with black sesame seeds usually indicate a sweet version rather than a savory version.

Whole Grain Phulka

Pinjing — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:28:15 +0000

I’ve been craving carbs lately (see previous post); in my latest attempt to alleviate my cravings for all things floury, I tried my hand at making some Indian flatbreads.

I decided to try making phulkas, which are unleavened flatbreads made with only flour and water (no oil). When the phulkas are cooked, no oil is used; the flatbreads are thrown on a hot cast iron griddle, flipped, then finished over an open flame. I’ve recently become a fan of Manjula (her blog is full of wonderful traditional Indian recipes and videos accompanying them; she makes everything look so easy and effortless; I highly recommend it). Her blog post on roti served as my inspiration.

As I didn’t have any of the Indian flours in my pantry (I must make a trip to a local Indian grocer!), I found myself trying various combinations of flours (all whole-wheat, half cornmeal/white flour, 1/4 besan (chickpea flour), 1/4 cornmeal, 1/2 white flour, half oat flour and half white flour), I found that the cornmeal versions dried out too quickly and became frisbees after a few hours; the ones made with half oat flour and half white flour stayed soft and had a pleasant nutty flavor (and much healthier than ones made with all white flour!). More importantly, making sure that the dough was kneaded until completely smooth and resting it for at least a half an hour ensured that the phulka puffed up over the open flame.

The recipe I have below is more of a guideline; factors such as the flour you use, humidity, and temperature of the water will determine whether you achieve phulka success or not. Even if they don’t puff up, they’ll still be tasty nonetheless.

Whole-Grain Phulkas
Makes 3 6″ flatbreads.

What you’ll need:

30g oat flour
30g all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
warm water

Useful tools to have: a silicon baking mat to knead the dough, a cast-iron griddle, small french-style rolling pin, tongs.

The procedure:

Mix the flours together with your hands, make a well in the center. Pour warm water slowly into the flour mixture while mixing with one hand until a rough dough is achieved. Keep kneading (adding water as necessary) until you get a smooth, soft ball of dough.

Lightly oil a piece of plastic wrap, wrap the dough in it and allow to rest for at least 30 mins.

Divide the dough into three walnut-sized balls. Dip each ball into some flour to keep it from sticking to the mat when you’re rolling them out. Roll out each phulka into a 6″ circle.

Heat a griddle over medium-high heat (too hot or too cool of a skillet will result in a dry phulka). Test to see if it’s hot enough by flicking a few drops of water on it; if it sizzles, it’s ready. Turn on another burner on medium heat (for finishing the phulka). Throw a phulka on the griddle, watch until it turns color (should turn a paler color); about 45 secs to 1 minute. Flip the phulka over and cook for another 30 seconds.

Using the tongs, carefully pick up the phulka and place it over the open flame, allowing it to puff up (should take about 5 seconds) and char in some spots. Flip over for another 5 seconds, then wrap in a kitchen towel to prevent it from drying out while making the other ones.

These should really be eaten immediately as they tend to dry out due to the lack of fat or oil. However, if you find yourself with extra, keep them in the kitchen towel and place in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator. I find that steaming them the next day refreshes them to a more pliable state.

Enjoy! Some suggestions for serving: a nice chutney, yogurt, curry, or as a wrap for scrambled tofu, salad, etc. The possibilities are endless, really.

Sourdough Chronicles: Pita Bread

Pinjing — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:19:37 +0000

Sourdough Pita Rounds, resting.

As some of you may know, I’ve made several attempts at starting my own wild yeast starter over the past few months. After finishing up school in April, I finally had the time to dedicate to cultivating a starter. Thankfully, this time I was actually able to nurse my starter until the point where it was viable, due to several factors:

Started with 100% rye flour; rye flour acts as a springboard for “apturing” wild yeast.
Measured my feedings using a digital scale rather than spooning out tablespoons of flour and water. Now I realize that when baking bread, one needs to be both precise yet flexible; measuring out the right amounts of flour, water, salt, etc. is paramount to a good result, but one also needs to develop that “know how” to account for changes like humidity and temperature that could cause you to deviate from a recipe.
Made sure I fed the starter enough; currently I’m feeding my 100% rye/100% white starters at a 1:1.5:1.5 ratio every 12 hours. Yeah, it can be tiring to make sure the thing is fed every 12 hours, but I figure that it’s akin to keeping a dog or a cat; you wouldn’t forget to feed your pet, would you?
Started my starter during the tail end of spring; the warmer weather allowed for a faster startup.

However, the inevitable effect of all this feeding is the “throwaway” that each feeding generates; I’m estimating that I’m accumulating/throwing away about 1 cup of starter every couple of days; this doesn’t seem like that much but with rising flour/food prices nowadays, even those few tablespoons in the garbage seems like a huge waste. Now, whenever I feed, I store the throwaway in a small pyrex glass container and pop it back in the fridge until the next feeding.

So far, I’ve made a couple of things with the excess; sourdough english muffins, sourdough pancakes and today’s recipe, sourdough pita bread. What’s so exciting to me about baking with wild yeast is the miraculous transformation of a pasty lump of flour and water into bread just by adding a bit of additional flour, some salt, water (and maybe sugar/fat if you’re feeling fancy). And it rises and everything, without the addition of any yeast.

This time, I improvised a pita bread recipe by converting the pita bread recipe in the Williams-Sonoma Collection: Bread book to one that was leavened with my starter. Because I didn’t feel like heating up my oven, I decided to bake these on the stove in my mini 6″ cast-iron skillet.

Sourdough Pita Bread
Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Collection: Bread by Beth Hensperger
Makes six 6-inch breads

What you’ll need:

6.5 oz. ripe starter, at 100% hydration
3 oz. warm water
5.75 oz. unbleached all-purpose flour (I actually used a combination of 2.75 oz. white whole wheat and 3 oz. all-purpose), plus extra if needed
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus extra for greasing
0.5 teaspoon salt

The procedure:
Combine starter, water, oil, and salt into the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until well-combined. Add the flour, tablespoon by tablespoon until the dough pulls away from the bowl sides.

Switch to the dough hook and knead on low speed for 3-5 minutes, until the dough is stiff and sticky. Add flour by the tablespoon if the dough continues to stick to the sides of the bowl.

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, rotate dough in the bowl so that all sides are covered in a thin layer of oil. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap (I just top mine with a microwave cover) and let rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1-1 1/2 hours.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 6 portions and roughly form each piece into a ball. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes. Prepare the skillet by heating it over low heat. Also, prepare a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a pastry brush for greasing the skillet.

Roll each ball into rounds about 6 inches in diameter and 1/4 inches thick. If the dough resists rolling out, let it rest for 10 more minutes. Cover the rounds with a towel and let rest 15 minutes until puffy.

Bread baking in the skillet.

Turn the heat on the skillet up to low-medium. Brush the skillet with oil. Transfer a round to the skillet, and cover for 30 seconds. Flip the bread over, using tongs and cover again for 30 more seconds.

Flipping the bread.

Uncover the skillet and continue to flip the bread every 30 seconds or so, allowing the bread to puff up. Bake until the bread is puffed and light brown (it took about 5 minutes for me). Transfer the pita to a plate and cover with a kitchen towel while you finish cooking the other pitas, remembering to grease the skillet between each baking.

Serve while still warm.