From Sardinia to India!

 Welcome to a Double Feature!! 

Part One: Sardinia

Last month I tried to make Sardinian bread which failed, so I had to expand it to 2 weekends of work. After which I forgot to write a post so... enjoy this 2 for 1!

For context, Sardinia is an island off the coast of Italy. Which I totally had to google when I found out about this bread. 

This bread was called pane carasau. According to Deborah Mele from ItalianForever.com, it can be found “as far back as 3,000 years ago." This light, thin flat bread was popular with Sardinian shepherds, who would head into the hills laden with parcels of pane carasau. This bread is also known as carta di musica (meaning “music sheet”), in reference to its previously mentioned thinness and could be kept up to a year. Mele Continues,

"Recently, archaeologists have found traces of this bread—still a Sardinian staple—in many of the megalithic stone dwellings scattered across the island. It’s made from durum wheat dough rolled into paper-thin circles and baked in wood-burning ovens. As they puff up like balloons, the still-soft rounds are each split into two discs, flattened, and baked a second time until crisp.”

It is because of this "balloon like puffing" that I had to turn this bread into 2 weekends of work. Mele's recipe is as follows,

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1 1/2 Cups Semolina Flour
• 1 Envelope Active Dry Yeast
• 1 1/2 Cups Warm Water (Approximate)
• Salt

TO SERVE:

• Fresh Chopped Rosemary
• Coarse Sea Salt
• Olive Oil

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine the two flours with about a teaspoon of salt.
2. In a small cup, dissolve the yeast in about 1/4 cup of the warm water, and let sit until bubbly.
3. Add the yeast mixture to the flour with the rest of the water.
4. Mix until you have a smooth dough, then cover and let sit 1 hour.
5. Knead for 5 minutes and cover for another hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F.
7. Spray two flat baking sheets with oil spray.
8. Knead the dough once more and divide into 8 equal balls.
9. Roll each ball out as thinly as you can to fit the baking sheets, and bake each for 5 minutes in the preheated oven.
10. The breads should blister but not yet brown.
11. Remove from the oven and pile one on top of the other.
12. Place a board or flat tray on top and let sit until cool.
13. To prepare for serving, return each bread to the oven for 10 minutes or until golden and crispy.
14. Remove, brush lightly with olive oil, sprinkle with fresh chopped rosemary and salt and return to the oven for a few minutes.
15. Let sit until cool enough to handle, then break into large pieces.
16. Serve warm.

My first attempt was promising in that I had built up a lot of good gluten structure. However, it clearly did not go as I had hoped.

When I finally got around to baking there was little to no puffing. My first attempts were too thick and the second was thinner but there was still little to no puffing in the bread. I'm not sure if it was a heat issue or what but as thin as I tried to roll these breads the puffing was very minimal.

These 2 photos on the right are from my first attempt. You can see from the second image that you cannot really see though the bread very well which means it was too thick.

The image below is from my second attempt. This is the most puffing I was able to get. Even my thinnest attempt was not enough to get this bread correct.

This bread is meant to be kept in bags while tending sheep in the mountains, so I kept this bread out in the open air for a week following my various tries, and they were kind of nasty... 😑

I have no idea what went wrong but it was still a good exercise in going through the motions of making bread, even if they didn't turn out right. 

Part Two: India

Our second bread is Roti. This bread goes by many names (Chapati, phulka, manni) and is made in a lot of regions all over the world. Roti as a simple unleavened bread, similar to the Sardinian bread. This bread tells the complex story of 500 years of European colonization. This bread is not only a staple in India and Pakistan, but also in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to name just a few. The people of South Asia who where dragged around the region by the aforementioned colonization brought their bread recipes with them. (Boyd, Porter, and Seal 2020) I followed this great recipe from Hebbars Kitchen. The pictures at the bottom of the webpage were especially helpful.

INGREDIENTS 

• 2 cup maida / plain flour
• ▢¼ cup wheat flour / atta
• ▢1 tsp salt
• ▢2 tbsp oil
• ▢1 cup milk (or as required)

INSTRUCTIONS

 

• firstly, in a large bowl take 2 cup maida, ¼ cup wheat flour and 1 tsp salt.
• mix well making sure everything is well combined.
• now add ¾ cup milk and mix well.
• start to knead adding milk as required.
• form a sticky dough, adding milk as required.
• now add 2 tbsp oil and continue to knead for 5 minutes.
• knead to a smooth and non-sticky dough.
• grease the dough and rest for 4 hours. make sure to rest the dough well, else you may end with chewy rumali roti.
• after 4 hours, knead the dough again. pinch a ball sized dough.
• dust with maida and roll gently.
• roll as thin as possible, dusting maida to prevent from sticking.
• now heat the kadai in high flame for 2 minutes.
• flip over and sprinkle saltwater. saltwater helps to make a non-stick coating to the kadai.
• take the rolled roti and stretch gently.
• make sure the roti turns translucent (the hand should be clearly visible).
• place over the hot kadai. make sure to keep the flame on from the bottom.
• cook until the bubbles start to appear.
• flip over and press cooking on all the sides.
• finally, fold rumali roti and enjoy immediately with curry.

This was an interesting bread in that it has to rest for FOUR HOURS! I have seen breads with a double proof, but never one that you just let sit for that long. The positive of this is that I could get the bread going in the morning and do other things around the house until the dough was ready.

As letting bread rest is becoming more of a widely used technique around this time, I asked myself why this was. If you live in a society where everything has to be done by hand; farming, gardening, grinding wheat, etc, why would you put up with coming back to a task later in the day? But then it hit me... as a new mom I am learning the importance of multi-tasking. So the idea that I started the bread and then did some laundry, etc and then came back to the bread is the same concept that has been used by moms and servants for generations! Multi-tasking is really where its at! Any moms in the chat? Can I get a woop!? 🙋

Making Roti as actually a very fun and interesting process. Once the rough has rested, been

shaped, and pulled as thin as it will go, the recipe says to heat up a Kadai, turn it over and use the bottom as a griddle. As far as I can tell a kadai is like a wok. We have a wok so I tried to use that, but the handles are angled up and got in the way of the pan making contact with the stove top. So instead I used the bottom of a large sauce pot. This made my Roti smaller but they tasted great! The recipe says to serve warm and that is certainly the way to go, but they are also good microwaved and eaten with hummus, which I am defiantly doing while writing this.

Over all, the failures and successes of these breads have been a delight. They have also made me realize that some things don't change. We, as humans, will always need bread and we, as moms, will always need to multi-task. Bread is a fascinating connective tissue that ties people together across regions and generations in a way that few things do.

So have a great day, make some Roti and call your mom.  💗