America's Test Kitchen

-Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Erin makes Bridget foolproof pita bread, Jack challenges Julia to a taste test of international yogurts, Dan reveals the science behind perfectly proofed dough, and Keith makes Julia the Mediterranean classic, shakshuka.

It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen."

-I bake a lot of bread at home, but I don't bake pita bread, and that's probably a shame because supermarket pita is a pale comparison of the real deal.

This is straight out of the bag from the supermarket.

Now, it's supposed to have a pocket.

No, this has a hint of a pocket.

There's really nothing in there.

How am I supposed to stuff all that good lamb shawarma and everything else into the pita?

And of course it tears so easily.

Is it too much to ask for a pocket in our pita, Erin?

-It is not too much to ask, Bridget.

It's definitely doable, and it's a lot of fun to make.

Okay, before we start, Bridget, I want to emphasize the importance of actually weighing your ingredients.

-Mm.

-When you're baking bread or baking anything, for that matter, I really highly recommend that you invest in a scale.

-Accurate every time, and it's kind of easier to do.

-It is easier to do.

-Yep.

-So we're going to start off with 14 2/3 ounces of King Arthur bread flour, and we're going to add 2 1/4 teaspoons of instant yeast.

Okay, so now we're going to move on to our water.

Any time you make ice water, you always want to fill up your container with ice and then top it off with water.

-Okay.

-So it should be more ice to water, and I'm going to strain this.

We want 10 1/2 ounces of ice water.

If you did have a different brand of bread flour aside from King Arthur, you'd want to decrease this by 1 ounce.

-Okay, gotcha.

-Okay, so now I'm going to add my ice water to my dry ingredients, and that's really important that we're using ice water because if it warms up too much, it's going to ferment a little too fast, and it's going to create bubbles.

In addition to that, we're going to add 4 teaspoons of honey.

Any type of honey is fine, and I'm also going to add 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil.

Now we're just going to turn the mixer on low speed for about 1 to 2 minutes until all that flour absorbs the water.

Okay, this looks perfect.

We're going to let this sit here for about 10 minutes.

We want that flour to really absorb the water, which is going to kick-start the gluten process, which is also known as autolyse.

-Autolyse.

10 minutes, right?

-Yes, 10 minutes.

-Okay, well, slow fermentation is the key to a perfectly puffed pita, and we're keeping the dough as cold as possible before it goes into the fridge to ferment, and here's why.

As soon as yeast meets water, fermentation begins.

Now, during fermentation, two things happen.

First -- flavor development.

Yeast gradually makes a panoply of alcohols and acids, which give bread delicious, complex flavor, but what we're focusing on here is the second process, structural development.

The yeast creates carbon-dioxide gas bubbles which give the dough lift.

The warmer the dough, the faster fermentation occurs.

Mixing the dough with room-temperature water gives the yeast a head start, so after it's been in the fridge for 24 hours, the gas bubbles have grown large.

This can cause tearing later on when we roll it out.

Now, we can slow fermentation down by starting with ice water.

The cold temperature during mixing means the yeast doesn't get that head start before it goes into the fridge.

The entire fermentation happens very slowly, and the bubbles never get too big.

The upshot is that we end up with a smoother dough that won't tear when we roll it out, and that's why we need ice water for the perfect pitas.

-Okay, so this has sat for 10 minutes.

Autolyse has kick-started.

-Mm.

-And now we're going to add 1 1/4 teaspoons of table salt.

If you add the salt earlier, the salt is going to dry out the moisture, and it's going to inhibit the gluten formation, so we really want that kick-start to happen.

We're going to turn this on to medium speed, and we're going to let this mix for about 6 to 8 minutes until a dough ball forms, and it clears the side of the bowl.

Okay, so our dough has cleared the sides of the bowl as you can see, and we are ready to roll.

Are you ready to roll?

-I am ready to roll.

-Alright.

This dough is fairly tacky.

-And you mean tacky like a good-thing tacky.

-Yeah, so we are going to spray down our counter.

-Ooh.

-I'm just going to knead this for about a minute.

What I'm doing here is, I'm just shaping it into a dough ball, and you'll notice that I'm using oil, and I'm not using flour.

We weighed our flour earlier, and we weighed our water earlier, so I really don't want to throw off that ratio that we worked so hard for.

You don't want to use too much because you want this dough to grab onto the counter, so we have our dough ball.

We are now going to divide this dough into eight pieces, you know, as best I can, and then I'm just going to weigh them to check myself.

So I'm going to oil my bowl lightly, and let's see how I did.

We're looking for 3 3/8 ounces per each dough ball.

-Gotcha.

-Perfect.

So we have our dough balls.

Can you grab that tray for me?

-Yeah, you bet.

That is also greased as I might observe here.

-Lightly oiled.

-Yeah.

-So we are going to shape.

You want to help me shape?

I'm going to show you how to do one.

-Otherwise, this means nothing.

[ Both laugh ] -Okay, so we want these to be in a tight, round shape.

-Alright.

-So what I'm doing is, I'm basically taking the dough from the exterior, and I'm really bringing it into the center of the dough.

Okay, so now you want to put the seam side down.

-Mm-hmm.

-And you just kind of, like, put your hand over it, and you just roll it in a circle.

It's grabbing onto the counter, and the important thing here is that, once you have a perfect dough ball, you flip it over.

There should be no dimple.

-D'oh!

Now, what would happen if one, say, had a dimple?

-Your pita might not perfectly puff.

Okay, so now we're going to spray these with more oil.

-Okay.

-And then we're going to cover it with plastic wrap.

-So should this be tightly wrapped or -- -Yep, so we're tightly wrapping it.

What we're going to do is put this into the fridge for about 16 to 24 hours.

-Okay.

-And that's going to allow the yeast to slowly ferment and some moderate bubbles to form but not big bubbles, and the flavor is going to also become more complex.

Okay, Bridget, our dough is out.

It has been refrigerated for about 24 hours, and we're ready to roll.

Okay, first, I'm going to flour our work space.

Basically, we're going to roll the dough out.

One of the most important things that we want here is we want to make sure that these dough balls are handled properly, so one of the first steps is keep track of that side that's facing up.

-Okay, nice, smoother side.

-Exactly.

Put this into our bowl of flour, and I'm going to heavily and generously coat it with flour.

Would you like to... -Yes.

-...coat a dough ball?

-Alright, keep it in a nice shape.

That's the top side... -Exactly.

-...the smoother side.

-Perfect.

-Flip it over.

-That's perfect.

-And smooth side up, right?

-Smooth side up.

-Alright.

-You got it.

Now we're just going to press it using our hands into about a 5-inch-round disk.

I usually start pressing from the inside out.

-Yes.

-I want it to be even.

If there are any bubbles in there, which there are because it did ferment, you just want to kind of press them out a little bit.

-Gotcha.

-Alright?

That looks great.

Now we're going to roll it into a 7-inch round.

-Okay.

-And the key here is to take our time.

Start rolling from the center and work my way out.

If you rush, the possibility of it sticking to the counter is greater.

Make sure that the dough is always moving around, and it doesn't stick, and if it does stick, stop and just lift it up and just throw some flour underneath it.

-Alright.

-Alright?

-Ooh, it's really forgiving.

-So we're rolling this out into a 7-inch round.

Are we good?

-Awesome.

-And now we're going to brush off any excess flour.

-Okay.

-Brush off both sides.

Now we're going to lift these up and put them onto the peel, keeping track of which side was up first.

So now we're going to put these into the oven, 425 degrees, rack to the lowest position.

Any higher, the dough would actually start to set too soon, and it would not puff properly.

We've had a pizza stone heating up as well for about an hour.

We're going to let these bake for about 1 to 3 minutes.

It can go really fast, so we really should not walk away, and this is part of the fun.

-And what are we looking for?

-We are looking for them to totally puff up like a balloon.

-Are they both puffing?

-Look.

There they are.

-Ah.

There's the pocket.

-That was yours.

Good job.

-It's making a pocket.

-Yep.

-Okay, so now that they are puffed like a balloon, I'm going to go in there and roll them over so that they can brown on the other side.

-Okay.

-Alright?

-I will pull those out for you.

-Look at that.

-Look at that.

Beautiful.

-Alright.

-Look like little sea creatures.

-They do.

Okay, now you can push that back in.

-Alright, back in, and how much longer?

-And we're going to let these bake for about a minute, just until the bottom gets lightly browned.

-Awesome.

-Okay, so it's been about a minute, and I'd say let's pull them.

-Look at those steamy, little pitas.

-Beautiful.

Alright.

So now we're just going to put them on this wire cooling rack.

-Got a little bit of color there, that's good.

-Yep, and now we're going to cover them with a towel.

We want them to rest for about 10 minutes.

Okay, Bridget, they have rested for about 10 minutes.

-Beautiful, and I love that, just the little bit of speckled browning on it.

-That's all you need, just slightly browned.

-Okay.

-Alright.

So I'm going to take one of the ones we've baked off first, just going to cut this in half.

-And you know what I'm going to look for.

This pita better have a pocket.

-Mm-hmm.

-Ooh, you could put a lot of lamb in there.

This pita has the perfect pocket, I would say.

Look at that interior, beautiful, lacy.

-Mm-hmm.

-Nice crumb.

Mmm.

-Soft and slightly chewy and -- -And moist.

-Moist, yep.

-I mean, that's something that you don't get, again, with supermarket pitas at all... -Right, mm-hmm.

-...is that they're so dry.

-Yeah.

-And the process was a lot of fun.

I couldn't have asked for a better pita professor.

-You were a great student.

-If you want to make these amazing pitas at home, start by mixing ice water, oil, and honey with bread, flour, and yeast.

Let it all rest.

Then add salt and mix again.

Divide the dough into eight pieces and refrigerate overnight.

Coat the dough with flour, shape into 7-inch circles, and bake them two at a time until they inflate.

Then flip them over and bake until lightly browned.

Let them cool for 10 minutes under a blanket and serve.

So from "America's Test Kitchen," the "practically perfect in every way" pita bread.

Mmm.

-So good.

-Today, we're diving into the world of international yogurts with Bishop, Jack Bishop.

-I feel like I should be wearing, like, reflector sunglasses.

Like, I'm not, like, cool enough for this segment already.

-Well, international yogurt sounds pretty mysterious.

-Yeah, and they're all made in the United States.

-Are they really?

-Yeah, so the world of yogurt has really changed.

The first revolution was the introduction of Greek yogurts.

-Mm-hmm.

-These are strained yogurts, thicker, creamier, lush that really transformed the yogurt landscape of the 1990s.

Half of all the yogurt we now consume in the United States is "Greek style."

-Oh, wow.

-It's all made here.

Yogurt is not something you want to put on a plane and ship across the world.

-And have it sitting in customs, right.

-So dip in.

-Alright.

-As we've seen all these different styles, Australian-style yogurt, Bulgarian-, and Icelandic-style yogurt, we wondered, is there something that's even more delicious than Greek yogurt?

-Ooh.

-I personally love Greek yogurt.

-Wow.

-And what do you like about it?

-That's delicious.

Its texture is a bit looser, and I kind of like that.

It's not so heavy.

It almost tastes like sour cream.

It's like I should be dipping potato chips in this.

-So these are all whole milk.

-Hmm.

-They're all cow's milk.

Yes, you'll see different cultures on the label.

The experts we spoke to said the biggest differences are length of time that the yogurt is fermented and the temperature at which it's fermented, and the type of cultures is not so important as the way the yogurt is cultured.

-Well, that's interesting.

-So as you're tasting, you're going to notice big textural differences.

-[ Chuckling ] Yes.

That is some stiff yogurt.

-Yeah, and the big thing here is whether or not the yogurt is strained.

-Oh, okay.

-So Greek yogurt is strained, which is why it's so much thicker and creamier than what I would call classic American-style yogurt.

Icelandic yogurt is also strained.

The Australian yogurt and the Bulgarian yogurt are not strained, so in addition to textural differences, which will be very obvious, some of these are tarter, some of them are a little bit more savory... -Yeah.

-...some are a little sweeter, and that's really about the fermentation process.

-Interesting.

The texture is dramatic as you can get in yogurt, from this, which is downright soupy, to that, which is almost like wallpaper paste.

I actually love the flavors of all of them.

This last one is a bit more acidic, but I could see that working in some instances.

This one is by far the thickest but, again, would be great in a dip, especially if you were adding liquid ingredients like vinegar or lemon juice or lime juice.

It could handle that.

And this one, this one actually might be my favorite just eating straight out of hand.

It is smooth.

It has some complexity.

Its texture is somewhat in the middle, so I'd say this is my favorite followed by these two and this one last.

-Do you want to know where we're going?

-Where are we going?

Where are we going?

Let's go to this country first.

-We're going very far, far away.

-We are?

-We're going Down Under.

-Oh.

-So, again, these are all made in the United States, but this is Australian-style yogurt from a company named Wallaby.

We thought it was actually very similar to some of the classic American-style yogurts that I grew up with and that you grew up with that are sort of moderately thick, not too thin, not too thick, and the flavor is kind of middle-of-the-road.

-Yep, nice and clean.

-Not super tart, not super savory.

-Mm-hmm.

-Just delicious.

-Mm-hmm.

Alright, let's go to this country.

-So this is Iceland.

This is very similar to the Greek yogurt.

It's really creamy and thick.

It's strained.

It's just got an amazing texture.

-Yeah, almost whipped.

Okay, this one was quite thick.

-So this is our favorite Greek yogurt, FAGE, that is strained yogurt, lovely texture, a little lemony, a little acidic that's just a wonderful ingredient.

And last but not least... -Last but not least.

-...this is the Bulgarian-style yogurt.

-Mayonnaise.

[ Both laugh ] This looks like a mayonnaise bottle.

-Yes.

You pay extra, I think, for that bottle, and it's the most expensive yogurt here.

This one is really, really thin, as you saw, also really funky and savory.

-Yeah.

-It had what I would call kind of cheesy notes.

-Mm-hmm.

-And it was a big yogurt.

-[ Laughs ] So there you have it.

In the world of international yogurts, you'll find a wide variety of flavors and textures, but you can't go wrong.

-When you bake a loaf of bread, you want the dough to expand as much as possible on the counter before you bake it.

This is called proofing.

To tell if your dough is ready to bake, you poke it with a finger or knuckle like this.

If it springs back right away, it needs more time.

If it leaves a deep indentation and doesn't spring back at all, you've waited too long, but if it springs back slowly and leaves a slight indentation like this, it's ready to go, and here's why.

The yeast in the loaf is consuming sugars and pumping the dough with gas, and the network of gluten is trapping a lot of it but not all of it.

Some is always escaping, so we need a constant supply of fresh gas.

As yeast runs out of sugar, the gas production slows.

Poking at this point will leave an indent.

If you don't bake the loaf now, it will eventually start to deflate.

And that is overproofed.

Wait.

You know what?

There's a way better way to explain this.

This bouncy house is a lot like our bread dough, and my assistant, Joe, is demonstrating the poke test.

Now the bouncy house is inflated by a fan run by a generator.

Now, that's our yeast.

As long as the fan is running, the house stays inflated, but as soon as the generator runs out of fuel, which is our sugar, it starts to deflate.

If Joe tries to bounce on it now, it won't spring back, and if we don't bake this bouncy house, it's going to be completely deflated.

That's why the poke test is key to hitting that proofing sweet spot.

-Shakshuka is a North African dish consisting of poached eggs and a fragrant red sauce.

It is becoming very popular, popping up on brunch menus everywhere, and I was even served it on a plane recently, which says a lot about shakshuka and that airline, and today Keith is going to show us how easy it is to make at home.

-So it's not surprising the popularity of this dish because it's really great.

So like you said, it's from North Africa, and what it is, is eggs that are gently poached in a tomato sauce.

That tomato sauce is flavored with red peppers, garlic, a lot of warm spices.

It's a really simple dish to make, but we've found, to make it foolproof, it was about getting the sauce texture just right.

-Hmm.

-So we're going to start with a 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes that I've drained as the base of our sauce.

I'm just going to put this into a blender.

Now, we really like whole tomatoes because they don't have any additives in them, and they break down nicely.

Our next ingredient are roasted red peppers, so I have 1 1/2 cups of jarred roasted peppers here.

We've drained them.

It's going to go in the blender with our tomatoes.

-Okay.

-So our next ingredient, and this is one of the first key ingredients to our sauce, was pita bread.

Now, you normally see shakshuka served with pita bread, but, actually, we're going to take a little bit of that and put it in the sauce.

The starches from that are going to thicken the sauce and keep it nice and cohesive and a nice texture all the way through cooking.

So I'm just going to take about a third of one of these, and I'm going to cut the remainder into wedges to serve later.

-Alright, so these wedges are for serving.

-That's for later.

-And only 1/3 of one of them is going in the sauce.

-Yep, and I'm just going to cut these into 1/2-inch pieces, and it should be about 1/2 cup.

Okay, so 1/2 cup, that's going to go in with our other ingredients.

Now, you've also noticed that I'm putting everything into a blender here.

-[ Chuckling ] Yes.

-A little strange.

A lot of the recipes we've found use a chunky sauce, chunks of tomato, chunks of red peppers, but we really found, in order to get those eggs cooked through evenly, we wanted a pureed sauce.

I'm going to blend this for a minute or two and get that nice and smooth.

Now that we have our sauce base, we can build the aromatics.

I have 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil in this 12-inch skillet.

We're going to heat that over medium heat.

As that's heating up, I'm going to prep our garlic.

I have four cloves of garlic here, and we're actually going to slice these today.

It looks like our oil is about ready.

It's starting to shimmer a little bit.

I'm going to get the garlic in there because if we get this too hot, the garlic is going to go too fast, so we're just going to stir this around.

What we want to look for is that garlic will start to get a little golden around the edges.

Okay, you can start to see that we're getting a little bit of browning here, but since I have so many spices, I'm going to get them in there now before our garlic gets too, too dark.

So I have a tablespoon of tomato paste.

I have 2 teaspoons of ground coriander, 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika... -Mmm.

-...teaspoon of cumin, 1/2 teaspoon of table salt, 1/4 teaspoon of pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, so we're just going to cook this with the garlic, let that tomato paste brown and get a nice rust color, and it should take 1 to 2 minutes.

Our tomato paste is browned.

It's nice and rust-colored.

Now we can add our tomato and pepper puree to that.

I have another 1 1/2 cups of roasted red peppers that have been cut into 1/4-inch pieces.

It will just give the sauce a little bit more texture.

Okay, now that this is all mixed together, we're going to just reduce this down to a simmer and we're going to come back and stir it occasionally.

It's been 10 minutes, and we can check the consistency of our sauce.

It's slightly thickened, you can see, but as I draw that spatula through, it will kind of slowly come back into that channel, so I think we are ready to cook our eggs, so I'm actually going to remove this from the heat.

I'm actually going to remove it from the burner, too, because we don't want any more heat going into this as we put our eggs onto the top, so I'm just going to smooth that off, make a nice place for our eggs to sit, and I'm just going to take a spoon and make some indentations on the top of this, seven indentations around the edge and one in the center to cook our eight eggs.

Okay, so I have one egg here, and I'll start, and I'm going to ask you to help me crack some eggs.

-You got it.

Egg number eight.

-And that goes right in the center.

We still have one problem is that eggs have a tendency to cook differently.

The whites are going to take a little bit longer to set than the yolks do, so we're going to give the whites a little bit of help, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start taking this sauce and pulling it up over those whites all the way around.

-Alright.

-What do you think?

-I think it's interesting.

-Egg art.

-[ Chuckles ] -We're going to slide this back over to our burner on medium heat, so we're going to bring that up to a simmer.

Once that's simmering and kind of bubbling over the entire surface, we're going to put our lid on and cook that for about 4 to 5 minutes, and we're going to come back after 4 to 5 minutes and check to see if the eggs have started to film over.

If they haven't started to film over, we can adjust our heat up or down, and then after that initial 4 or 5 minutes, we're going to cook it for another 1 to 2 minutes until the eggs are set.

-Okay.

Getting the eggs to cook evenly in shakshuka can be tricky.

Here's why.

Inside a pan, heat moves in convection currents.

The liquid at the bottom of the pan heats up and travels towards the top.

When the sauce is jam-packed with big pieces of red peppers and tomatoes, the chunks inhibit the convection currents that transfer heat to the eggs, so they cook unevenly.

Pureeing the sauce, however, ensures that the eggs are surrounded by a consistently smooth, fluid sauce that the convection currents can easily move through unimpeded.

And that's why using the blender is key to evenly cooked eggs in our shakshuka.

-Let's check on our eggs.

It smells great.

-Mm-hmm.

-Oh, it looks great, too.

So I can feel this with the back of the spoon.

Yeah, the whites are set, but you can still feel that the yolks are liquid-y.

It's going to be perfect.

I have 1/2 cup of cilantro that I'm going to sprinkle over the top here.

This is just chopped.

I'm also going to add an ounce of feta cheese that's crumbled.

This is about 1/4 cup.

-Mmm.

-And I also have 1/4 cup of kalamata olives that have been sliced.

-Now, that's a looker.

So I'm interested to see how you serve this.

-So you can see that that yolk has set up, and the white has set up, so it's actually not that hard to get an egg out of here.

-Oh, so just a large serving spoon, you can kind of carve out each egg?

-Yeah, and you can take some of the sauce and just fill in around it.

-The smell is amazing.

-Okay, a wedge of pita for you.

-Thank you.

-You have to do the yolk break, right?

-Oh.

-You want that yolk to get into that sauce and enrich it, so -- Oh, yeah.

Look at that.

-Ah, a little of that yolk on that fragrant sauce.

Mmm.

Delicious.

-Oh, it's so good.

-Well, I watched you put a lot of spices in there, but I don't taste any one of them distinctly.

It's just a fragrant sauce.

-Yeah, you get a little bit of heat from the black pepper and the cayenne pepper, but then you have those nice kind of sweet warm spices, the coriander, the cumin.

-And the roasted flavor of those roasted red peppers, that gives it a heartiness that actually -- I know this is served on brunch menus a lot, but as I said earlier, this would be an amazing Tuesday-night dinner.

Keith, this is delicious.

-It's great, isn't it?

You can see why this is so popular.

-Yeah.

So there you have it.

If you want to make shakshuka at home, puree canned tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and pita bread into a sauce in the blender.

Saut some garlic and spices and stir in the sauce along with some diced roast red peppers and simmer for 10 minutes.

Make small divots in the mixture, place raw eggs into the divots, and spoon some of the sauce over the egg whites.

Cover the skillet with a lid and simmer gently until the eggs are cooked through.

Finally, sprinkle with cilantro, feta, and olives before serving.

From "America's Test Kitchen" to your kitchen, a great new recipe for eggs and spicy tomato and roasted red-pepper sauce.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings, testings, and select episodes at our website, americastestkitchen.com.

This is going into rotation at our house.

-Is this better than the airplane?

-[ Chuckling ] Oh, yeah.

Like you have to ask.

-Right.

-[ Chuckles ] -Let us help you with dinner tonight.

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