Tag Archive: Baking

Almost everyone loves focaccia, the semi-flatbread that is a cross between pizza dough, bread, and the love child of olive oil and salt. Here in Argentina it’s likely the hidden origin behind local favorites fugazza and fugazetta, and I’ve seen some versions that were made on focaccia, but these days, the majority seem to be on a pretty standard pizza base.

The bread’s origins are supposed to have been from the Roman incursions into the area of the modern day Middle East, where they discovered local, unleavened flatbreads – the things that we know today from their descendants of pita, lavash, and similar breads. These were and are used both to dip into sauces and spreads, and as an adjunct to eating by hand, using them as a scoop for whatever’s on your plate. The Romans apparently loved the idea and carted it back with them when they were sent packing.

Now, it’s pretty clear that this was the origin of the pizza, and the dough used for pizza making is definitely more similar to the flatbreads of the Levant. And, focaccia likely came about the same way. The name is an Italian contraction of the original Latin, panis focacius, essentially “bread from the fireplace” – a bread cooked directly in the hearth rather than in an oven or in a mold of some sort.

But what’s the difference between pizza dough and focaccia? For the most part they look fairly similar, other than that the exposed top of the latter gets browned and then drizzled with olive oil, salt and, usually, herbs. There are two big differences though, and they really are quite different breads. Focaccia contains a large amount of olive oil right in the dough, far more than a pizza dough, and also more liquid – a 1:1 ratio wet to dry ingredients. It’s a very wet dough and a bit of a pain to work with, but the results are well worth it to do it right.

If you have a mixer with a dough hook, save yourself a huge amount of effort and use it for this. It’s do-able by hand, but hard work.

Focaccia

½ kg 000 flour, or better yet, high-gluten flour (harina glutinada)
2 teaspoons table salt (10-12 gm)
½ cube fresh yeast (25gm) or 1 packet instant dry yeast
140 ml olive oil
360 ml room temperature water
sea salt
fresh rosemary and/or dried oregano

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl (if using a mixer, sift into the mixer’s bowl and run it on low to medium speed at this point). Mix the salt into the water and stir to dissolve – this will help distribute the salt better in the dough. Add the yeast, about a third of the olive oil, and two thirds of the water and mix well. Continue to add the water, a bit at a time, until it’s all incorporated.

If doing this by hand, pour another third of the olive oil onto a flat, clean counter surface and turn the dough out onto it (if you’re using a mixer, pour that third of the olive oil into the bowl and turn up the speed to medium-high). The dough will be very wet and sticky, almost like melted marshmallows. That’s fine, it’s exactly the texture you want. Instead of the usual pressing and folding type kneading that we’re used to for bread, you’re going to have to keep scooping up the dough, stretching it out, and sort of slapping it back down – get a good rhythm going of scoop, stretch and slap and just go at it for about 15 minutes. Gradually the dough will get less wet and stick and become very elastic and shiny (it will also incorporate most of the oil on the counter). In a mixer, speed it up to full and it will take about 7-8 minutes to reach the same point.

Put the dough in an oiled container and cover with a clean dish towel and let it rise until doubled in volume, about an hour. Unlike a bread dough, we’re not going to punch it down to knock the air out of it, we want as many of the air bubbles we developed as possible to stay in the dough. Pour about half of the remaining olive oil onto your baking tray, place the dough on it and gently press it out to cover the entire tray (a large pizza pan works well too). Cover with the towel again and let rise until doubled again, roughly an hour.

Use your fingertips and press dimples into the dough at regular intervals. Drizzle with the last of the olive oil. Sprinkle with coarse or flaky sea salt and the herbs. Place in a hot (220°C) oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until it’s golden brown on top and sounds hollow when you tap on either the top or bottom. Let cool. Eat.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

We always have fresh bread around the house. Sometimes we buy it from a local bakery, but more often, it’s just something that one or both of us make every other day or so. No cultural offense intended, but the miñon that is ubiquitous on tables throughout Buenos Aires has, bluntly, the texture of a medicinal cotton ball and a flavor not much different. It amazes me, and many of my friends, that a culture so based in the history of its Italian and Spanish ancestors can mass produce such a pale imitation of the staff of life.

One of my favorites, for many uses, though especially for sandwiches (and those of you who read my blog know that I’m a sandwich fanatic), is the ciabatta, or “slipper bread”. In classic form it’s somewhat flatter than a more rustic Italian loaf, mostly due to being a very wet, soft dough, and, also is generally pinched in towards the center, almost hourglass shaped. In short, looking a bit like a bedroom slipper. The form maybe important in some presentations but isn’t key – it’s the process of making and working with a wet dough that gives this bread its unique texture.

There are two versions of the bread, one made with a starter, essentially a sourdough, the other a more “quick bread” style – and I’m going to hit you up with the latter because who among us has time to spend on making starters and all that? Now and again for a special occasion, you know? I also recommend using a mixer with a paddle attachment (rather than dough hook) – you can certainly make this bread by hand but it requires an inordinate amount of work.

Ciabatta – Slipper Bread

220 gm bread flour (000 or better yet, “harina aglutinada”)
80 gm semolina flour
300 ml warm water
1 packet dry or half cube (25 gm) fresh yeast
2 teaspoons (10 gm) salt
1 teaspoon (4 gm) sugar

In the bowl of your mixer place the warm water, sugar and yeast, give it a quick stir and leave it for a few minutes until the yeast is bubbling away. Add the flours and salt. Fit the mixer with the paddle attachment – this dough is very wet and what you need to do is beat a lot of air into it. Start the mixer slow until it is all combined – the texture will be like a thick pancake or crepe batter.

Turn the speed up to fairly high and let it go for approximately 10 minutes. By this point the gluten will have developed sufficiently that the texture will be something like marshmallow. Turn the speed down to medium and continue for another 5-6 minutes (you can, if you like, switch to the dough hook at this point, particularly if it seems like the paddle is having trouble kneading the dough) – until the dough more or less starts to “climb” up and wrap itself around the paddle or hook.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, lightly cover with a kitchen towel and leave in a warm place to double in volume. Remove from the bowl, split the dough in two (or more if you want to make small sandwich breads), and spread each half out in a rough disk on a floured surface – don’t flatten it too much, just stretch it out to about 25-30cm across. Starting from one side and using a pastry scraper or spatula, roll the dough up from one side to the other, then place on an oiled baking sheet. If you want to make the traditional form, use a large round cutter, or scissors, and cut an arc out of each side. Cover with the towel again and leave until doubled once more.

Bake in a very hot oven (200°C or more) until browned and crisp on the outside and it should sound hollow when you tap on it. Rotate the baking sheet once or twice during the cooking so that if your oven doesn’t heat evenly on all sides the bread will cook more evenly. Remove, leave to cool, slice and enjoy.

One of our favorite things to do with one of these big loaves is treat it almost like a pizza – we slice it in half horizontally, brush it with olive oil and stick it under the broiler to get golden. Then we top it with a mix of olive oil sauteed vegetables – zucchini, eggplant, tomato, onions, peppers, chilies, olives, and perhaps a little finely chopped prosciutto (jamón crudo), some salt and pepper. We pile those on the two halves of the bread, top with a good melting cheese – cuartirolo is a favorite – and a grating of parmesan, and stick it back under the broiler to lightly brown. Makes a fantastic dinner!

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

“Come on, throw us a bone.” Finally, proof that someone besides the editor has read my columns over the last few months. I was sitting in a restaurant, minding my own business, and someone walked up to me and asked if I was the guy from SaltShaker who also writes the weekly recipe for the Buenos Aires Herald. Seeing no escape, and anyway being pleased that someone actually knew about this column, I said yes. And he said, “You’re doing all these recipes to lighten things up, how about something for those of us who have to eat gluten-free?”

The G word. The latest fad to strike the diet world. Which is not to say that there is not Celiac’s disease, there is. There are also wheat allergies, which is a whole different thing unrelated to gluten. There are also, dare one suggest it, camp followers. Let’s get all scientific for a moment. Gluten is a composite of two proteins that are found in the seeds of certain grasses, particularly wheat, rye and barley. It is a protein that a good number of people have trouble digesting – symptomatically, around 1 in 1700 people have active Celiac’s disease – and the only treatment is a gluten-free diet.

But, there are all these newfangled screening tests out there, and a whopping 1 in 105 people can show a predisposition, i.e., the genetic markers to develop it. And a whole lot of those folk have decided better safe than sorry, sometimes with, and sometimes without medical recommendation. Add to that the whole group of people who jump on bandwagons, with food gurus out there telling them to cleanse their lives of everything they ever enjoyed on a plate, and you get predictable results – every other person you meet seems to be “just a bit gluten intolerant”. For these folk, the only treatment is rolling your eyes, because you remember when last month they were doing a lemon juice detox.

I’ve talked with enough people who live on a gluten free diet to have gotten a good sense of what they miss – breads, pizza, pasta and pastries. That pretty much sums up most of what we’d make from the grains of gluten, and I’ve spent some time with several of them coming up with recipes that work. Tying all this in with this column’s Argentine bent, and pizza and pastries came right out on top. Since I’ve recently written up a column on pizza, we’ll hold that for a bit and hit that latter. What’s the snack treat that every visitor to Argentina gets told they must try? An alfajór, the sandwich cookie that oreos only dream of being.

Maicenas – Cornstarch Alfajores

Traditional cornstarch alfajores still contain a good amount of flour, usually 2:1 cornstarch to flour. In order to stabilize the structure you need a good flour substitute, in this case, part rice flour and part potato starch works, with a little extra baking powder for lift.

150 grams butter or margarine
100 grams confectioners sugar
2 extra large eggs
Vanilla extract
a few drops yellow food coloring (optional)
80 grams rice flour
50 grams potato starch
250 grams cornstarch
1½ teaspoons baking powder
dulce de leche or marmalade, and grated coconut

Cream butter and sugar together. Add in the eggs and combine well. Mix in the vanilla and food coloring and sift in the four dry ingredients. Mix well to make a smooth dough. Refrigerate for 20 minutes (particularly important if you use butter rather than margarine).

Roll out with a rolling pin to a 3mm (⅛”) thickness and cut into 3cm (1¼”) circles. Place on a buttered baking sheet (or non-stick). Cook 15-20 minutes in 190°C/400°F oven. Put a spoonful of dulce de leche (make sure it’s one not stabilized with flour) or marmalade on the underside of one and sandwich with a second cookie, press down lightly so that the filling very slightly bulges out, clean up edges to make it even and pretty and then roll the sides in grated coconut.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

On a purely observational basis as an outsider, it’s pretty clear that Argentines have a sweet tooth, or is that sweet teeth? Some days it seems there is a confectionary on every block in the city, tempting us with pastries, cakes, tarts, cookies, and more. Kiosks and drugstores display rack after rack of candies, cookies and the ubiquitous alfajores.

So it’s not really a surprise to find that, while not topping the charts, Argentina racks up an impressive per capita consumption of sugar – pretty much only coming in behind Brazil and Australia, and more or less tying for third place with Thailand at a bit over a whopping 40 kilos per person annually. Brazil and Australia, just for the record, come in at just over 60 and 50, respectively.

One of the oddest concoctions here for those of us from abroad is the pionono. At its base it’s simply a jelly roll, or Swiss roll, and there’s nothing odd about it when it’s wrapped around pastry cream or chocolate or dulce de leche or… well I could go on. Where it goes off the rails at first blush is when it’s filled with savory ingredients. Common choices are chicken or tuna salad, ham and cheese, cream cheese and olives, and similar sorts of fillings. The striking contrast between the sweet cake and the savory filling is, at first jarring to many who didn’t grow up with the combination.

Now perhaps it shouldn’t be, after all, I grew up in the Midwest of the U.S. where a Monte Cristo sandwich is a popular lunch treat – ham and/or turkey and Swiss cheese layered in bread, dipped in beaten egg, fried, and then served up topped with a fruit compote, maple syrup (our favorite), or powdered sugar. McDonald’s McGriddle breakfast sandwich of egg, bacon, cheese and maple syrup pancakes is a worldwide hit. The French bake Brie “en croute” and top with figs and walnuts. Salted caramel. Candied bacon. It didn’t take long for the savory-sweet combo of a pionono to grow on me, nor on many of my expat friends.

Still, I tend to find the versions at my local casas de comida to be a bit overbearing, often too sweet on the cake and too heavy on the mayo in the filling (the quantitatively impressive use of mayo in South America, particularly at the tables of our neighbors to the west in Chile, is another whole mystery to be explored one day). So, I make my own. While you can buy a premade pionono cake layer in most grocery stores and bakeries these days, why not give a try at one yourself, which also allows you to flavor it as you like?

5 eggs
50 grams sugar
1 tablespoon honey
60 grams 0000 flour
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (Japanese shichimi is great here too)

In a mixer begin beating the eggs at high speed until they are light and frothy. While the mixture continues to beat slowly pour in the sugar and honey. After about 6-7 minutes you’ll have a stiff, whipped mixture. With a spatula or large spoon, gently mix in the flour and seasoning (feel free to substitute dried herbs or other spices), making sure to get it nice and evenly mixed. One note for celiacs – gluten free flour mixtures, cornstarch, rice flour, and/or mandioca (yuca/tapioca) flour will work fine. The mixture will deflate some, not to worry. Butter or oil a baking sheet (roughly 28cm x 38cm), smooth out the mixture and pop it into a 170°C oven for 7-8 minutes until it’s lightly browned and firm to the touch. Remove, let cool for 2-3 minutes, and then loosen it all around with a spatula and flip out onto a clean kitchen towel. Immediately roll it up in the towel and leave to cool (just helps it hold its shape later on).

When cool, unroll and fill with your choice of savory fillings as mentioned above – one of our favorites is to spread it with softened goat cheese, then scatter thinly sliced endive, roasted red pepper strips, and fresh seafood (cooked) like crab or shrimp. Roll up, chill in the refrigerator, slice, and serve with everyone’s favorite here, salsa golf. Oh, there’s yet another topic for a column.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.