Sesame cumin crackers

Nothing fancy here folks but these babies are delicious! My first foray into baking with chickpea flour, I came across this recipe when browsing back through some old issues of SIFT magazine (Holiday 2018, No. 12) from King Arthur Baking Company (King Arthur Flour back then). The company published this beautiful magazine over 5 years, 3 issues per year, but, alas, they stopped with the holiday issue at the end of 2019. I have all of them except the very first and they tell me it’s not available. I did find an old press release with a PDF of the first 5 pages and also this link to what’s in that first issue if you’d like to check it out.

This cracker recipe comes from Sofra, the popular middle Eastern bakery/cafe in Cambridge MA. Steve and I have experienced some of their goods in past years, since it’s not far down the road from Mt. Auburn cemetery. During our Providence days, we would occasionally take a drive to stroll the beautiful grounds, enjoy the arboretum and pay our respects to the likes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dorothea Dix, Winslow Homer and Isabella Stewart Gardner. There’s a great view of Boston from the higher elevations, and birding is popular too. A calming place!

The dough is simple to put together but plan ahead since you roll out quarters of the dough, stack them between parchment and chill them for at least 4 hours or overnight before cutting and baking.

Here’s the recipe: In a small bowl blend 3/4 cup buttermilk with 2 tablespoons tahini (be sure and stir it up well first!). In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle combine 227 g / 1.75 cups all purpose flour, 50 g / 1/2 cup chickpea flour (I use Bob’s Redmill), 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 1 tablespoon ground cumin, 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice and 113 g / 4 ounces cold unsalted butter cut in 1/4” cubes. Blend on low until butter is in small pieces then add the buttermilk mixture and mix to a wet dough.

The dough is pretty easy to handle when the work surface is properly floured. Divide the dough in 4, keeping the waiting quarters in the fridge as you roll out one at a time. Roll each quarter to a 12”x13” (ish) rectangle - mine was pretty loose-y goose-y since I envisioned my crackers would end up in a variety of shapes and sizes, and I didn’t mind some rough edges. The main thing is rolling the dough nice and thin (1/16”) for better crisping up during the bake.

Line a half sheet pan with parchment, sprinkle with cornmeal (or semolina) and place the first rolled out dough quarter on it. Place a second piece of parchment on the dough, sprinkle again with cornmeal and place the rolled out second quarter on it. Repeat with the other two portions. Cover with plastic and refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. I chose overnight.

When ready to bake, heat the oven to 350ºF. Have a teaspoon of kosher salt and 2 tablespoons sesame seeds on hand. Lift one of the dough portions on its parchment onto an empty sheet pan. Fork prick it all over, brush lightly with water and sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds over the top. Cut into squares or rectangles (or whatever shape and size you’d like) with a pizza cutter.

Repeat the above with the next batch of dough on a second empty sheet pan. NOTE - I baked two pans in one go but if you prefer to bake one at a time, go for it.

If you only have one or two half sheet pans and need to rotate batches, pull the baked sheets off onto cooling grids and let the pans cool completely before you continue the above steps with the remaining dough quarters.

Bake about 15 minutes, rotating your pans half way through. I baked mine a bit longer since they weren’t deeply browned and crispy at the 15 minute mark. Remember - all ovens are different! Let cool then recut or break apart and enjoy.

Steve and I found them very tasty with a schmear of hummus or a nice slice of Cotswald cheese. Yum. One note - the medium grind cornmeal that I used for “dusting” the parchment sheets had too much coarse crunch for our tastes. I’d suggest using either fine-grind cornmeal or semolina to 86 that problem.

They keep well in a closed container for a good week. Try ‘em, you’ll like ‘em.

Have a wonderful week!

Roasted garlic cheese bread

Ooooh I loved this baking adventure! Not only did I use Fontinella, a delicious bread-worthy cheese from The Cheese Lady, but added in some roasted garlic that the Steve-man has recently been providing in spades.

I’ve been wanting to experiment more with different ways of filling and shaping bread dough and am often inspired by ideas I absorb from King Arthur Flour’s “Sift” magazine and/or their website which is chock full of wonderful tips, tricks and ideas.

In addition, I’m learning more about the ways to tweak one’s bread recipe from a straight or direct dough to a pre-ferment approach to build more flavor into the final result. Not only is it fun but appeals to my scientific bent.

In addition to KAF’s website, my go-to resources for bread baking include Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Bread Bible”, Peter Reinhart’s “artisan breads every day” and Jeffrey Hamelman’s “Bread”. So much to learn.

For this project I married ideas from a provolone bread recipe from CIA’s “Baking and Pastry” that I’ve been making for some years now with a KAF recipe for a cool looking twisty cheese/sundried tomato/herb number. I wanted to do a poolish this time and found some great tips on the “Weekend Bakery” blog, written by a Dutch couple who bake at their home. Lots of good stuff there too.

I’m not here to slog through the calculations but, in a nutshell, a poolish is equal weights of flour and water taken as a percentage of the whole from the base bread recipe you’re using. Based on my understanding of how one goes about this, I created my poolish with 200 g bread flour, 200 g water and 1/8 + 1/16 teaspoon of instant yeast, looking for a 6 hour room temperature fermentation. NOTE: the amount of yeast you add will vary depending on how long you wish your poolish to ferment.

Here’s my poolish after about 5.5 hours - nice and active and bubbly!

To make the final dough I combined the poolish with 510 g bread flour, 7 g instant yeast, 235 ml tepid water/milk mix, 71 g olive oil, 20 g butter and 16 g salt.

Using the dough hook I mixed everything for 4 minutes on low speed and then 2 minutes on medium speed. Then a 30 minute bulk fermentation followed by a fold-over then another 30 minutes before dividing.

After the bulk fermentation

I divided my dough into two 740 g portions with a plan for two different shaping approaches.

The first shape involves rolling the dough into a rectangle and sprinkling it with 227g grated cheese (fontinella in my case). Then I took 6-7 cloves of roasted garlic and smooshed and pieced them up, scattering the pieces over the rectangle. A light sprinkle of Penzey’s salt free pizza seasoning mix, then roll up a snug log.

Starting the log roll

Once the log is complete, pinch the seams, place it seam side down on a parchment lined sheet, slit it down the middle to a depth of about an inch, leaving the ends intact. The log will open up to expose the filling.

Then shape it into an “S” and tuck the ends under. Pretty cool.

My second shape followed the method used for babka in which you roll up the log as already described, then slit the log entirely down the middle yielding two separate pieces filling side up.

Begin at one end and twist the two pieces over and under each other, continuing to keep the filling side up as best you can (I could use some more practice on this one!). In this case I then went for a couronne or crown by forming it into a ring and tucking the ends under.

Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 45-60 minutes, heating the oven to 350ºF during the last half of the rise.

Bake for 35-40 minutes until nicely browned.

The fontinella and roasted garlic went a long way to making this one a truly delectable bread experience.

For a family supper we sliced it, drizzled some melted butter over it, loosely wrapped it in foil and warmed it for about 10 minutes in a 325ºF oven. Oh my.

Yup. I’d make this again.