Zaatar - Pull Apart Bread

Finally I managed to complete all the recipes in this mega marathon. Better late than never right..
Zaatar is  a middle eastern spice powder made with dried herbs such as oregano, thyme and marjoram, roasted sesame seeds, salt and sumac. I made this at home for a previous recipe. Find it here. I used the leftover spice to make this lovely pull apart bread.

Zaatar can be used as a condiment mixed with olive oil, or can be used to top breads or can be used as a coating spice for meats. It is so versatile and it tastes awesome. I am unable to explain the taste in detail as I am not at all familiar with the unique flavour. But it is tangy, tart and salty and it is so nice. You need to try to understand it.

I am happy that I was able to make the perfect bread dough for this recipe. Ofcourse I checked gayathri's video thoroughly. Since I didn't have a round tin, i tried to bring in the shape in small muffin cups and they turned out like beautiful lotuses. I loved the shape.

The filling is pretty easy as I just applied butter and sprinkled zaatar over it. As zaatar doesn’t have any type of chilly in it, I added some pepper powder while filling the bread. In one of the cups, I added some cooked potato to the filling.

Recipe Source: Gayathriscookspot
Country: Middle East

 Ingredients:

For The Dough:
Flour – 1 3/4 cup
Salt – 1 tsp
Sugar – 2 tsp
Instant Yeast – 2 tsp
Butter – 2 tbs
Curd / Yoghurt – 2 tbs
 Milk – 1/2 cup


For The Filling:
Zaatar Spice – 2 – 3 tbs
Butter – 2 tbs
Pepper Powder – 1 tsp
Boiled potato - 1

Method:

• In a bowl mix together flour, salt, sugar, yeast, butter, curd and milk.
• Mix to form a rough dough.
• Turn it on to your work table, and knead the dough for 12 – 15 minutes.
• Grease a bowl with butter and place the dough inside.
• Brush the top with more butter, cover with cling film and set aside for 1 hour or until double in volume.
• Preheat oven to 200°C once the proving is done.
• Turn it on to the work table, press it, sprinkle with flour and roll into a thin square.
• Apply butter on top and sprinkle zaatar and pepper powder.
• Cut the square into smaller squares.
• In some of the squares, mash and place the boiled potato as a very thin layer.

• Grease an 8″ round tin or 3 muffin cups
• Fold each square along the diagonal to form a small triangle.
• Slightly fold the triangle along the longer side and place them in the bread/muffin tin. This will look like a petal of a flower.
• Fill the tin with such petals. Start from the far end of the tin and then come to the center.
• Brush the top of the bread with milk and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top is golden.
• Remove from oven, allow it to sit for 5- 10 minutes.
• Flip it on to a plate and flip it back to reveal the top.
• Serve immediately.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 75

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Yangpabbang

Here is an interesting bread made with vegetables and cheese. Yangpabbang is a savory Onion Bread native to Korea. This bread looked very simple with onions and red capsicum. Unfortunately I couldn't find red peppers in time to make this bread. So I replaced them with green bell peppers. I also added little oregano spice mix in the bread to make it more interesting. 

I made this bread with a mix of wheat flour and all purpose flour. The outside is a little crunchy, while the inside is chewy and soft. We need to be careful that the bread has cooked properly. Since there is a stuffing inside, the flour surrounding the stuffing will take some time to get cooked.

This bread generally has onion, bacon, and cheese inside but I made the vegetarian variation. I guess non-veg would be more interesting. It can make a great meal with the addition of a salad or sides. With his mega marathon I learned many new breakfast items.

Recipe Source: Varada's Kitchen

Country: Korea

Ingredients:

For The Dough:

Butter – 2 tbs

Luke Warm Milk – 1 cup

Wheat Flour – 1 cup

Maida/ All Purpose Flour – 1 cup

Salt – 1 tsp

Instant Yeast – 1 tsp

For The Filling:

Green Bell Pepper – 1 small

Onion -2

Pepper and Salt – To Taste

Cumin Powder – 1/2 tsp

Mozarella cheese - 3 tbsp

Oregano seasoning - 1 tbsp

Method:

• In a bowl mix together flours, salt, yeast and mix well.
• Add butter and milk and mix to form a soft dough.
• Knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth and elastic.
• Cover with cling film and set aside until double.
• By the time the dough is proving, make the filling.
• Mix the onions, bell peppers, salt, pepper and cumin and set aside to sweat.
• Remove the vegetables and discard the water.
• Mix mozarella cheese with this mixture of vegetables.
• Take the proved dough to counter, press to release gas.
• Shape and roll it into a rectangle.
• Place 3/4th of the filling in the middle and bring both the sides on the filling.
• Pinch the sides and place it seam side down in a greased loaf pan
• Top the bread with the remaining filling.
• Cover and set aside for 20 minutes.
• By the time it is proving for the second time, preheat oven to 200°C.
• Bake the bread for 35 – 45 minutes. If you feel that the topping is going very dark, place an aluminium foil on top and bake.
• Remove from oven and let it cool for five minutes.
• Transfer the bread to wire rack and allow it to cool completely.
• Slice it up, toast and enjoy!

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 75

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X - cookies

In this mega marathon, I had no difficulty in finalizing the recipes for the difficult alphabets like Q, X, Z etc. Somehow these were the among the first ones to finalize. As soon as I saw the recipe for X-cookies in gayathri's space, I picked it up and finalized it for 'X'. I guess this is the first cookie I am preparing with chocolate. The cookies turned out fantastic. H said they actually looked like human beings.

X Cookies is a Sicilian cookie, also known as Cucidati. Whether you call them Cucidati, Sicilian X Cookies, or just plain Italian Fig Cookies, the end result is the same. Tender sweet dough, that’s wrapped around a very flavorful spiced fig filling.  The cookie dough is so buttery and is prepared like a pie crust with cold butter so that the cookie turns out buttery and flaky.  The filling has figs and apart from that it has lots of candied orange peel, chocolate, apricots and raisins.  The cookie dough is so buttery and is prepared like a pie crust with cold butter so that the cookie turns out buttery and flaky.  The filling has figs and apart from that it has lots of candied orange peel, chocolate, apricots and raisins.

Recipe Source: gayathriscookspot

Country: Sicily

Ingredients:

For The Filling:

Dried Figs-1 cup

Raisins-1/4 cup

Candied Orange Peel-1/6 cup

Dark Chocolate-45 gm

Almonds-1/6 cup

Apricots-1/6 cup

Instant Coffee Powder-1/2 tsp

Cinnamon-1/4 tsp

For The Pasta Flora:

Flour/ Maida-2 cups

Sugar-1/3 cup

Baking Powder-1/2 tsp

Salt-1/2 tsp

Cold Butter-1/2 cup

Curd/ Yogurt-1/2 cup

 Method:

For The Pasta Frolla:

• In a food processor add flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and butter.
• Run the processor until the flour resembles bread crumbs.
• Add curd and run until a crumbly dough is formed.
• Transfer to a cling wrap, cover it tightly and refrigerate.

For The Filling:

• Boil 1 cup of water and add figs.
• Boil for 2-3 minutes until the figs are soft.
• Drain water and allow it to cool.
• In the same jar in which you made the pasta frolla, add all the ingredients for filling.
• Run the processor until the filling forms a ball.
• Remove from the jar, divide it into 6 equal portions and keep it covered.

Making The X-Cookies:

• Remove dough from fridge.
• Divide it into 6 equal portions.
• Dust counter with flour.
• Roll a single portion into a 6″ log.
• Roll it into a rectangle of 2 1/2″ * 9″.
• Now roll one portion of the filling into a 9″ log.
• Place it in the rectangle.
• Bring the sides of the dough and cover the filling.
• Now holding the log tightly, roll it into 12″ log.
• Divide into 4 equal portions.
• Now make a slit mark on both sides of the smaller log leaving 1 1/2 cm intact.
• Curve the slit edges on both sides to form the letter X.
• Arrange on a greased baking tray.
• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Bake the cookies for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
• Cool on wire rack.
• Store in air tight jar and serve along with coffee.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 75

An InLinkz Link-up