Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- Today on Milk Street, we're doing flatbreads, which is my favorite category of breads.

And my favorite flatbread comes from Antakya, Turkey, the southeast corner of Turkey.

It's called pide and it's like a focaccia.

It's thicker than most flatbreads, has a great texture and a great flavor.

Then we go to Lahore, Pakistan, where we figure out how to do a potato stuffed naan at home without a tandoor oven.

And then a super simple Tuesday night flatbread which has yogurt in it.

So please stay tuned as we bring great flatbreads from around the world into your kitchen.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

- (speaking Turkish) (laughs) - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) - So my question is, why in the United States do we not make, at least in general, we don't make flatbreads.

And one of the reasons is we're used to big doughy breads.

Now, when I was in Turkey a couple years ago, I went to Antakya to the Kirkici bakery, this has been around forever.

They have wood fired ovens and they make a bread which is very common all throughout Turkey, called pide.

And it's sort of in between a flatbread and a regular bread.

It's about this high, so it has more texture and more height than a real flat flatbread.

But it's not a full yeasted bread that would be nice and thick.

One of the things we found, and this is kind of unusual, is we're gonna start with a basic sponge.

A sponge is usually a cup of flour-- this is bread flour-- a cup of water, yeast, of course, and honey, and we're gonna mix that up.

We're gonna do this and let it sit, and this is kind of crazy, for just 30 minutes.

And that starter, that sponge is gonna add a tremendous amount of flavor to the bread.

So even 30 minutes of sitting around is going to make a big difference.

Now you can see this has started to bubble even in 30 minutes, which is great, 'cause that's developing flavor.

Put this on the mixer.

So we started with one cup of flour, we're gonna add three more cups now.

We're gonna add one more cup of water And a little bit of oil.

Here's a simple formula you might want to just remember: for most breads, a lot of breads, it's four cups of flour to a cup-and-a-half of water.

That's the typical hydration.

By that, I mean the ratio of water to flour.

This recipe, however, is two cups of water to four cups of flour, plus a little olive oil.

But it's going to give you a fluffier, softer bread with more air holes in it.

So let's get started on this.

Just on low to mix it, and then we'll turn up the speed a little bit.

So now I'm gonna go add the salt.

This is a little controversial.

Most bread recipes don't have you add the salt at the beginning.

And I figured this out, or I was told this 35 years ago when I started out in cooking, I went to a professional bakery in Berkeley in California.

The guy told me there that he didn't add salt at the beginning because the salt will-- tends to heat up the dough as it's kneading.

And if it gets too hot, it's gonna kill off the yeast or at least slow down the action of the yeast.

The problem with that is I find, because I'm an idiot, occasionally, I'll forget to add the salt because I didn't put it in at the beginning and I won't add it later.

So I started adding the salt at the beginning.

I didn't really find any difference in the yeast, but I do trust professional bakers.

So we're going to-- we just kneaded this for about five minutes.

We're going to add the salt now.

It's not the end of the world if you add at the beginning, especially if you're using this much yeast.

But in a professional bakery, they don't add the salt at the beginning.

Okay.

So that's been about ten minutes.

So I'm gonna scrape down the sides.

Now, since this is so sticky, you can tell it's a very sticky dough, we're gonna do something a little unusual.

Normally, I would take this dough out, I would liberally flour the board, and I would knead it for a minute or two, shape it into a ball, put it into an oiled bowl, cover it, and then let it sit.

So we're gonna actually let it rise.

The first rise is gonna be in this mixing bowl.

So this will take an hour to an hour-and-a-half.

There's plenty of yeast in here.

This is a warm kitchen, and it will probably rise pretty quickly.

So let's see what happened.

Wow!

Did it rise?

Yeah.

It rose very nicely.

I guess we're not in a cold kitchen.

Now, this is sticky.

So before I do anything, I want to put plenty of flour down the counter.

Yeah, it is sticky.

By the way, this dough feels very soft and easy to work with, and it just makes just a terrific bread.

So I'm just going to form a ball, press it underneath like that, get it nice and tight.

So there we go.

So we'll let that sit just 15 minutes, and then I'll come back, we'll start shaping the dough, let it rest again, and then into the oven.

So those have risen nicely.

Now, it's okay if they touch, by the way.

So let this rest another 20 minutes now.

Okay.

Now, when I watched the bakers do it, there were, I think, four guys in this little bakery.

It was just amazing, I mean, these guys, they would just fly through them and they dimple them when they go into the oven.

It was just an incredible thing.

So there's a little bit of egg.

The other thing, I spent about an hour there.

And one of the gentlemen's job, he had this window in the front of the bakery, and he'd sit there and he'd sell the bread.

He was there because it was a social institution.

So the great bakery like that, it serves so many functions.

It's not just there to make bread.

Now, the dimpling, it's just like focaccia.

So we don't want this to rise way up as it bakes.

So we're going to go like that, then like this.

I don't really care how the bread turns out.

I just want to do this part.

Oh, it's so satisfying.

(chuckles) Now I can go home, I just... Now I've had a really good day, I get to dimple the bread.

And then some seeds, nigella seeds as well.

Look at those beautiful dimples.

You know, once you get the hang of bread, I know a lot of you are really good bread bakers, but it's really not hard at all.

And I started getting, last few years, getting into making pretzels and all sorts of flatbreads.

Okay, so this goes into a super-hot oven, 475, for about 15 or 16 minutes.

That's one of the advantages of a flatbread.

It cooks very quickly.

So how does that look?

It looks pretty good.

It's gonna have a nice soft texture to it, it's a little like focaccia, which is also a very wet dough.

And how's it gonna taste?

Mm, it tastes like I'm back in Turkey in Antakya.

And remember that little trick, which is take a cup of flour, cup of water, the yeast, a little honey, whisk that together and let that sit even for just 30 minutes, and you get that poolish or that sponge really develops a lot of flavor.

So if you don't like your flatbreads too flat, you want a little bit of texture to them, this pide bread from Turkey is absolutely perfect.

And I just want to say a word about Antakya.

It was pretty much destroyed during that earthquake a while back, we met so many people there, the people at this bakery were just tremendous.

So we wish all the people in Antakya the best of luck and we hope to go back soon.

Thank you.

- If you do a lot of bread baking, you come across a lot of terminology.

You may see the word preferment, poolish, sponge.

What do these things mean?

Well, generally these are three types of ways to start bread.

If you think of sourdough bread, which is a naturally raised bread from the yeast that's in the air, it has a very tart, sour, delicious flavor.

Well, we're giving our bread a little jumpstart there and giving it a little more flavor by creating a poolish.

The yeast is going to chew away at the flour and create carbon dioxide, which creates the bubbles.

So in a sourdough bread with the large bubbles, that's a lot of natural yeast in the air that's being absorbed into that bread, which creates carbon dioxide when it bakes.

Same concept here, but we're starting with instant yeast instead of natural yeast.

So we did a lot of testing here at Milk Street, working with different levels of poolish or preferment, to see how it would affect the bread in the end.

And we made a 30 minute poolish, a one-hour, and a two-hour resting time.

And you can really see the difference here.

The 30 minute, that yeast has sprung to life, it's creating lots of bubbles, and that's what we want.

You can also smell it.

You can smell it starting to sour very, very slightly, which adds delicious flavor to our bread.

The one-hour poolish, also still going strong, but you can see the bubbles are starting to pop there.

What will happen here if you leave them too long is the yeast will eat all of the nutrients in the poolish and will have nothing else to live on, it will stop giving off carbon dioxide and then, basically, it's dead-- your bread is not going to rise anymore.

Our two hour, you can see in the bowl, it rose and fell and the bubbles are kind of popping there.

So we baked a couple loaves off here to see what a poolish can do.

The first loaf had a two-hour proofing time with the poolish.

The second one had the 30-minute poolish.

It added tons of flavor even in that short amount of time.

But more importantly, we got a nice spongy texture and those beautiful holes in there.

There was still enough yeast life left so that when we added the rest of the flour, it came roaring back to life and made a beautiful loaf.

A little bit tartness there, really good.

Now you could make a flatbread like this Turkish pide or a focaccia or a pizza dough, mix it, proof it, and use it.

But go for the preferment treatment.

It's worth the trouble to add a lot more flavor and really, really great structure to your bread.

- A foldable, soft, a little bit charred, chewy flatbread is one of the great pleasures of eating food from the Levant.

And I'm gonna show you a very easy one that's great for beginning bakers and more advanced bakers alike.

We're gonna start with 206 grams of bread flour.

I'll talk about the flours in a second.

Because we're also adding in 35 grams of whole wheat flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a little bit of table salt.

So we call for a bread flour because it's going to help give a little bit of chew, a little more structure in a short amount of time.

And this is a very quick weeknight flatbread.

But if all you have is all-purpose flour, that's absolutely fine.

The whole wheat flour is for flavor.

So if you don't have that, you can make this with 100 percent bread or all-purpose flour.

So now that we have our flours in here, we're going to add in whole milk regular yogurt.

The fat's really important, also that it be runny yogurt and not strained yogurt is important.

However, it's a flexible recipe.

If all you have is low-fat yogurt, you can use a little bit of olive oil to add in some fat.

And if all you have is a strained yogurt, like a Greek-style yogurt, then what you can do is add in a little bit of water.

This is two teaspoons of honey.

We're gonna mix this together until we get a shaggy mass.

You wanna make sure before we turn it out onto the counter to do just a little bit of kneading-- not a lot.

You want to make sure that you get all the flour up from the bottom of the bowl so that you have a properly hydrated dough.

I'm just going to knead this a little bit on the counter.

Simple kneading is you hold a corner with one hand, and you fold it over and use the heel of your hand.

So why we added the whole wheat flour, the honey and the yogurt was to mimic time.

Time is the key ingredient into really complex flavored bread-- so sourdough breads or long-rising breads.

Well, we wanted these breads to come together in an hour.

What do you do?

You add flavorful ingredients.

The acidity helps, the calcium in the yogurt helps create the texture we're looking for.

But also that sourness sort of mimics what you get from sourdough bread.

You can see now that what I have is something that's tacky but not sticky.

None of the dough comes away with my fingers.

We're gonna divide it and let it rest for a few minutes.

While it rests, it's gonna get much smoother.

So you can use a scale, but this makes about six breads.

So I just divide it in two and I'll divide each of these into three.

You'll probably notice I haven't floured my work surface yet.

That's because to make the dough into our six balls, it actually helps to have a little friction here so that you get a nice smooth surface.

And the surface tension you're creating helps you get a little bit of a puff in the skillet later, which we're going to show you.

You do wanna let these rest for at least ten minutes, but you've got time, these are flexible.

The other day I made them, I went for a walk for an hour and then I came back.

You just need at least ten minutes for these to relax a little and get ready to be rolled out.

You also want to make sure that they're covered and that there's no air drafts so you don't get a crust on the top.

Okay, so these breads are fantastic plain, but they're a great vehicle for butter and flavored butter.

We're going to make an herb butter with a couple tablespoons of salted butter in here.

While you're making the butter, it's good to start preheating your pan because it needs to preheat slowly and for a long time-- you don't want it really hot.

So I just have this preheating on medium.

I'm just going to add some garlic while we chat.

So one garlic clove, minced into here.

You can go in any flavor direction, so think of about what you're serving.

It's a nice way to customize things.

It's a nice way to get the family involved.

So what I'm doing here is I'm just cooking the garlic gently.

I want it to develop a little bit of toastiness, but I certainly don't want it to burn.

So I'm watching it carefully.

And I'm going to add parsley, cilantro, and dill.

But again, the world is your oyster.

This could be tarragon, it could be fennel fronds.

You want to add one pinch of salt.

So it can just hang out off heat while we roll out our breads.

All right, you can grab one bread.

Make sure your counter is dry, and you want to add just a little bit of flour.

So I like to take the ball and press it down, sort of get a flat pancake.

I think that gives me a good start for getting a rounder shape.

And then what you want to do is I like to roll from the center out, never all the way down.

And rotate.

Rotate, roll, rotate, roll.

And you want about eight inches.

So we're gonna put this on in and see where we're at in terms of preheating-- we're gonna let it sit.

It needs about a minute.

I'm gonna have my eye on it looking for bubbles.

So we're going to flip this over and cook the other side.

So these aren't pitas.

They're not gonna poof all the way through, but it sort of breathes.

I love this when flatbreads start to breathe.

See?

Golden brown spots, perfect.

Then we're going to brush with our herb butter.

All right, let's bake off a few more.

So I'm thinking I'm learning that a little higher for this pan is working today.

The one thing to make sure is that you don't have it super-hot, it will burn before it's ready to poof.

See how nice and strong it is?

That's thanks to that high-protein bread flour.

Ooh, look!

It's growing.

Like a little volcano.

But all that is great, that's the structure from the bread flour is allowing the steam to stay inside, and it creates that awesome pocket.

See that?

That's perfect.

That's what we want.

Love it.

See, you just have to find the right temp for your pan, Give it a flip.

Yes!

Roll out one more bread.

And now that we've got our pan at the right temp, the second side's gonna go much faster with the second bread.

We're there.

Perfect.

Herb butter.

So you just keep going like this.

You make your six breads; as one cooks, you roll another one out, and then it's time to eat.

And look at this.

I love these, I don't think you need to serve anything else for dinner, these are so good.

The yogurt makes them a little bit decadent, but also has a beautiful, soft texture.

They're completely foldable.

For beginning bakers, for advanced bakers, for a family baking party, you want to make these yogurt flatbreads.

Remember, I put herb butter on top, but you could also use za'atar.

You could use harissa.

What you have to do is try them.

- During our trip to Pakistan, we tasted so many different naans in so many different places.

They're all made fresh to the minute and are just fantastic.

We knew we could make an incredible dough, but our biggest challenge was how to cook it.

We don't have access to tandoors, and most people are not gonna have that in their backyard.

So we wanted to replicate that intense, bubbly char without the tandoor oven.

And, as usual, good old cast iron came to the rescue.

So to start with making our dough, we have a bowl full of plain, all-purpose flour here.

We'll stir in the dry yeast, a little bit of salt, of course.

Then in the bowl here, we're going to make what's called a well.

A little bit of yogurt goes in.

Use a full fat yogurt.

And then water.

So we're just gonna slowly rotate the dough and pull in the flour and then start stirring and mixing it in.

The dough will look very dry.

It'll look as if it'll never come together.

But we'll switch to our hands, and at that point, you'll be able to feel that the dough is actually a lot moister than it looks.

Okay, so once all the little dry bits are picked up, your bowl's pretty much empty.

Set that aside, and now we'll go to the counter.

No more flour needed.

We're going to give it some kneading.

This takes about maybe six minutes or so.

So what I like to do is press it out, fold it over, press it out, and turn.

So fold, press, turn.

You know, in Pakistan, the naan is made by hand always, but if you prefer, you can do this in a mixer with a dough hook, also.

It comes out exactly the same.

Okay, see?

Now we need to let this rise for about an hour.

I'll oil this bowl just a little bit.

The rising is really important for a couple of reasons.

We developed all that elastic gluten, and now we're going to let it relax a little bit.

It needs that process to make a tender dough.

So our dough is made.

It's having its first rise of an hour.

And now we're going to focus on making the potato filling.

So we make our cooked potato filling.

We're adding a little bit of ghee.

Ghee is a clarified butter, which means the milk solids have been removed from it, so it's the pure butter fat.

But in this instance, regular butter works fine.

We're also adding a little bit of chili powder.

We're also adding whole cumin seeds.

Now, you might think those are going to be too crunchy, but they actually soften while the potatoes cook, and they contribute beautiful flavor.

And, of course, a little salt.

Add just a little bit of water, two tablespoons, there we go.

And we'll stir this together, cover it tightly and put it in the microwave for a total of ten to 13 minutes, about.

And we want to stir it once about halfway through.

(microwave beeping) I hear the microwave.

Let's see.

Okay.

Be careful lifting the lid, because you will get some steam-- perfect.

We'll give these a little bit of a mash, and then we will stir in our other flavorings.

This is napa cabbage.

This just gives a little bit of texture to the potatoes.

Then we have some fresh herbs.

We have a combination of mint and cilantro.

Those are fantastic together.

And then, of course, some fresh green chilies chopped up.

You want a consistency that holds together, but it's not quite a paste.

Okay, so we'll let this cool down a little bit while our dough finishes rising.

And then we will get to that happy place where we can join the two together.

The dough has doubled in size.

It's nice and puffy.

If I punch it down, it'll actually start deflating, which is what you want to see.

Comes out of the bowl very easily because of the oil we put into it.

Put it onto the counter.

Just turn it right out, you don't wanna develop excessive gluten right now.

And we will then divide this into six.

We're going to form these into balls.

And by doing that, we get the gluten reactivated just a little bit.

We want to tighten this up a little bit.

And then we will let them rise another 25 to 30 minutes here for the second rising.

And now it's time to continue the fun.

We're going to take each of these and flatten them into a seven-inch circle about three-eighths-inch thick.

Now, this doesn't matter if they're perfect circles or not.

Naan is a very relaxed, casual, forgiving thing.

We'll take our potato filling and just distribute it amongst the six as evenly as we can.

Let's put these back out.

And we will take each one of these, put them on the counter, pull in the edges.

That's okay if they overlap a little bit, and get pleated, which is fine.

Pinch to seal, because this dough needs a little bit of pinching.

Then flip them over and press flat again.

Roll or press them to about a six-inch diameter, and they're going to be about a half-inch thick, maybe a little bit more, and put them right back onto the sheet tray.

Okay.

So all that's left now is to get the skillet preheated, ready to blister these little babies.

And we'll cover them with a towel just to keep the surface moist while we do that.

Now we're about to cook the naan.

We have the cast iron skillet starting to heat.

This takes about six minutes or so over medium-high heat.

We have some soft ghee here.

We'll brush both sides of the naan with just a little bit of ghee.

We'll sprinkle the top with a little bit of sesame seeds.

This gives a little extra crunch and a little flavor 'cause these seeds will get toasty brown in the skillet.

And here's the dimpling, the fun part, right?

Just use your fingers to press in dimples.

I'm going to put the seam side down first to seal that seam shut.

Ha!

And while that cooks about two to two-and-a-half minutes before we flip it, I'll get the next one ready.

I think smoke is a good indicator that this might be ready to flip.

Yes, turn it over, and there we go, okay.

See that nice little crusty char on there?

That's exactly what we're looking for.

The second side probably needs a little bit less time than the first side.

About one to one-and-a-half minutes is good for it.

Turn that over-- ooh, let's put this right onto the platter, whoo!

Naan number two.

Here we go.

The one that just came out of the skillet gets brushed with a little more ghee while it's piping hot.

The ghee just sort of blends and melts over it.

Now, you've been watching these cook one at a time in a cast iron skillet.

Believe me, we did try other methods that would cook all of these at once.

We tried the oven, we tried it on high heat.

We even tried the broiler for a little while.

Nothing gave us the char we needed, or the texture of the bread like the cast iron skillet.

There we go, front and center.

The naan, I want to show you the inside.

Oh yes, look at that beautiful... You got the green herb and chili-speckled potatoes.

Mm.

Oh, so good.

You want chewiness, which this has.

The charred areas are fantastic.

And then you get that soft, creamy potato with little hits of spice and chili heat.

Really beautiful.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.