East goes West. Pide bread with the Tangzhong method

Northeasterly veering southwesterly, 4 or 5.

Slight.

Fog patches, rain later.

Moderate occasionally very poor.

Pide. Soft pillows of deliciousness. If you ever had them in a Turkish bakery, still warm, you will not forget them. Can you imagine, if you look at this picture, how they might smell? How the whole area smells?

This bread is more or less unknown in the UK (apart from some pockets in London). You might find them occasionally in Middle Eastern supermarkets, but then they are full of preservatives. This does not improve their taste. But, since they are made with white flour and have no preservatives, they can become quite chewy after a few hours. This is still okay if you want to eat them with a stew or with a meat and its juice, but if you, like I did, plan to have it just with feta cheese, some olives and tomatoes (who smell promising like tomatoes), you want it as light and fluffy as possible.

The Tangzhong method for bread just promises this. If you are interested in the Chemistry behind it, just click here. And here is a nifty Q&A to the Tangzhong method.

Two to three things are important:
1. The roux is not an extra ingredient, so you need to take the flour and water from the amount which is overall given in your usual recipe.

2. The roux is always done with 1 part flour to 5 part water.

3. In order to be as successful as possible the roux should be around 35% of the recipe, resulting from up to 10% of the flour.

The last part might be true, but I never bothered to calculate. Just took two or three tablespoons of flour and fluid in the right proportion and added the result back. But if you are really anal about the perfect bread, here is a calculation method. 

I made more dough than I needed for the pide. First of all I want to have a bun for tomorrow and second I found that you can go only so low in bread-making. Sure, you can make one single roll but this is quite tricky to measure out. With my proportions you end up with dough which gives you roughly a bread of 200 gram. That is smaller than the smallest white bread you can buy in a bakery. And with the Tangzhong method it will stay fresh longer.

I used fresh yeast from Ocado and made it bloom with some of the water, flour and sugar, but you can use ¼ teaspoon of quick yeast.

One word of warning: Pide dough is fairly wet and the Tangzhong method results in every bread to feel too wet. So you have here now a double whammy and might feel tempted to add flour. Don’t do it. If you use a bread machine or food processor, just have faith in my measurements. Yes, even at the end of the dough cycle it will be wet, but you can see it working. If you do it by hand, you will get a really good workout.

Pide with Tangzhong

15gr of fresh yeast (see above), or ¼ teaspoon quick yeast

200gr white bread flour

120gr water

6gr sugar

strong pinch of salt

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of plain yoghurt (take one and put aside)

Nigella and Sesame seeds to sprinkle.

If you use fresh yeast, take a bit from the water and stir both together until smooth. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and the sugar and let it bloom for about 20 minutes.

If not, go straight to the Tangzhong method:

Take 10gr of the flour and mix well with 50gr of the water. Put it into a pot on low heat, stir constantly until it becomes translucent and quite thick (it might actually pop out from the bottom of the pot). Take it out of the pot and let cool a bit.

Once the roux is cool, add all the ingredients, including the roux and the yeast mixture, bar one tablespoon of yoghurt and the Nigella and Sesame seeds. Knead very well, either by hand or bread machine, until the dough is satiny and elastic and still a bit wet. DONT ADD FLOUR.
Shape the dough into a ball and transfer to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for 60 minutes, or until the dough has doubled in size.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius and oil a baking tray.
Remove the dough from the bowl, take as much as you want (I took 2 thirds) and flatten it out on in the tray. Brush with a bit of yoghurt and leave for another 30 minutes to relax, then brush again with the yoghurt and sprinkle with the Nigella and Sesame seeds. If you want, you can cut the surface in diamond shapes, but this is not obligatory. Bake in the preheated oven for 13-16 minutes until the bread is puffy and golden and serve warm or cold.

Verdict:

The taste was amazing and it still tasted fresh and fluffy after some hours.

It did not rise more than previous, but this is due to the yoghurt on top, which presses it down.

The other 1/3 of the dough I made into a bun which was just washed with a quail egg. Look how big it turned out, and yes, this is a dessert plate. 

It`s massive and I can just about imagine how fluffy it will be inside. Will be perfect with my fried fish tomorrow: A luxury version of a filet-o-fish.