Baked an Azerbaijani Tandir Bread

FearlessGrill

My wife and I are part of a historical re-enactment group focused on the medieval time period. She was looking through a 10th century Arabic cookbook one day and found a reference to 'an egg-shaped ceramic cooker', along with a bunch of recipes designed to be cooked in one. We mentioned this to some other folks who do this, and we were asked to teach a class on the subject at a recent event. We made several recipes from the book my wife found, but when I did some additional research I found that one of the primary uses was (surprise) baking bread. There weren't any bread recipes in the cookbook we had, so I poked around online for some traditional breads designed to be cooked this way. I came across this one, and thought it looked good.

A full writeup of the cook is posted on our blog at http://www.fearlesskitchen.com/2010/05/recipe-azerbaijani-tandir-bread-guest-post-from-fearless-grill.html



As you can see from the picture, I actually made two of these during our class. The one on the left was done without any wood added to the fire. I put in one small chunk of apple wood for the one on the right, which added just a bit of flavor, but a great color.

This was pretty easy to make. I used 3.5 cups of bread flour mixed with 1.5 cups water, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon active dry yeast. I mixed it in our stand mixer, and then put it in a ziploc bag and refrigerated, since we were baking it at our class the next day. When we got there, I took it out of the bag, let it rise for about an hour, then shaped it, slashed the top, brushed with an egg yolk, sprinkled with poppy seeds and sea salt, and baked for 20-25 minutes on my pizza stone. It was pretty good, and both loaves disappeared pretty quickly.

Enjoy!

-John

kilts

I think you wold be interested in this sight.

http://www.marygbread.com/default.asp?page=1

Jim Wills is the baker at Marry G Artisan Bread .
Jim Wills also builds Wood Ovens
The Bread for wood Ovens have a higher Hydration .
The bread will get a lift from the higher Hydration & the Higher cooking temps.
The higher cooking temp also improves flavor

Susan Egglaine

Thanks for posting. Have not made any bread in a while,time to do some