Simit (Turkish pretzel)

Hello friends,

I hope everyone had a good time this past week with the holidays and all. My partner and I spent time with my family, and made plently of new goodies which included simits, a delicious turkish savory delicacy.

Simit

For those who don't know what a Simit is, it is a round, savoury, or sometimes sweet, roll shaped like a wheel, kinda similar to a bagel, but very different in taste. It is covered in sesame seeds, which adds lots of flavour and style. The secret to making these is to dip them into a molasses and water solution before baking. This gives the colour and most of the delicious flavour. Note that although we use molasses, the simits won't be sweet unless molasses or sugar is added to the dough.

In Turkish cuisine, two types of simits are predominant: one savoury, large, and thick simit, and one sweet, small, thin one. This recipe is to make the former, which I prefer! I love having these with breakfast: it goes with any spread, cheese, you name it.

So, I decided that the family would have Simit for breakfast on Good Friday. I'm a lazy man so I decided to do most of the prep the night before, leaving little to do for the next day before breakfast time!

In making any recipe that will stay in the fridge overnight, one must be careful about the yeast content. I am using 1 tsp here. If you are in a hurry and want to do this in one go, add 1/2 tsp extra yeast, and instead of putting them in the fridge, let them grow for 90 minutes, and then continue at the "dipping" stage.


SIMIT RECIPE (Makes 8 Simits)

For the dough
Bread flour - 500 gr
Instant yeast - 1 tsp ((1 1/2 tsp if you are doing this in one go))
Salt - 1 1/4 tsp
Water - 300 gr

For dipping
Molasses   1/2 cup
Water        1/2 cup
For the water - molasses mixture, it's only important that you use the same volume for each ingredient. The amount doesn't really matter as long as you have enough to coat your simits.
Sesame seeds     as required

Night before
Step 1) Mix the flour, yeats, and water until combined, cover (with cling film), and let rest for 20-30 minutes (this makes kneading shorter)
Step 2) Sprinkle the salt over the dough and knead for around 8-10 minutes until you have a smooth dough. Turkish cooks will always tell you it should be the consistency of your earlobe

Earlobe consistency!

Step 3) Cover and let the dough about 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until doubled in size. If you used the extra yeast, this should be around 1 hour only
Step 4) Place dough onto your work surface. I don't use any flour, but if you do, please use very little. Roll the dough into a log and cut into 8 equal pieces.
Step 5) Line a large baking tray with parchment paper and spray some oil on the surface.

Step 6)Next, take each piece, roll out 10 inch (25cm) long. Make sure it is the same thickness throughout (this is actually not easy, don't worry too much if it's uneven). Then, twist one edge while holding the other. You will feel the dought doesn't want to twist anymore. At this point, bring the two sides together and seal them together by rolling your palm over it. The edges should overlap around 1 1/2 inch (4 cm). Be careful not to flatten it, otherwise your simits may be uneven. Place these on the baking tray. At this point, don't worry if they are too small, you can stretch them out later.

Shaped simits

 Step 7) Cover trays and place into fridge overnight. If you are doing this in one go and you used 1 1/2 tsp of yeast, then cover and let rest at room temperature for 1 1/2 hours.


Next morning
Step 1) Rise and shine. Take the simits out of the fridge and let them rest at room temperature. Meanwhile, dissolve the molasses in the water. Pour some sesame seeds in a separate plate.

Ready to dip!

Step 2) Take the simits and dip them into the mixture. The simits will collapse and stretch: this is normal (or so I believe after doing this half a dozen times). Then, place the simits in the sesames and make sure it's coated all over. Next, place them back onto the tray.
Step 3) Let the simits grow again for around 1 hours or more if necessary. Hopefully, the yeast is not dead, and your simits will rise again. If they don't, no worries, you will still have a good tasting simit. It may take some time for the simit to start to rise as it was in the fridge overnight. If by 1 hour you haven't noticed any chance, you can start baking them. To check whether the simit is growing, just poke it gently with your finger. If the hole you made bounces back quickly, then the yeast is most likely active: if it collapses, then there is probably no yeast activity left.
Step 4) Preheat your oven to 260C / 500F (very hot!). Place the tray into the oven and let it bake for 15-20 minutes or until brown. The molasses give the simits a dark colour. I generally flip the simits over for the last 5 minutes of baking (it takes 20 minutes in my oven), to ensure both sides are crispy.
Step 5) You're done! All is left now is to enjoy your work!


Simits are best when still warm. Let them cool for 5 minutes, and then consume with various breakfast or brunch foods. Here's a picture of our table on Good Friday morning!

Good Friday breakfast

Delicious soft sandwich rolls (20% wholemeal)

 

Sandwich rolls are a cross between brioche and bread. They’re soft, sweet, savoury, and are delicious for sandwiches, burgers, or hot dogs. I always though these rolls were an industrial invention which wasn’t possible to make at home (like those supermarket blueberry muffins... how to they make it taste like that?). Actually, I realised, making these rolls is the easiest task ever. They’re a lot easier to make than bread, barely require any shaping or specialist equipment. They taste amazing and easy to bake.

And here’s a twist. This recipe has 20% wholemeal flour in, so although no 50/50 like traditional wholemeal breads, they will have some fibre content, and still taste like white bread. Instead of milk, I used milk powder as I was low on milk. If you want to use milk and don’t have milk powder handy, then replace 125 grams of water with milk (1/2 a cup).

If you are familiar with bread, you may realise that these rolls have around double the amount of yeast, salt, and sugar you’d normally expect in a normal loaf of bread. This results in a much sweeter, saltier bun, which you will see, is delicious! Also, the added yeast reduces the fermentation time greatly, making this one of the quickest ways to make rolls I have come to find!

I strongly recommend you try these! I have had these plain, with butter, hummus, hot dogs, a burger, and I’ve enjoyed every combination. Make these rolls if you are in a hurry, or make them if you are going to a picnic, or if you are planning to have a barbecue! You won’t regret it!

Recipe

White bread flour                 400gr

Wholemeal bread flour       100gr

Water                                      290gr             

Instant yeast                         2.5tsp

Sugar                                       30gr

Butter                                       40gr

Salt                                         2 tsp

Milk powder                           2 Tbs

Instructions

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl until well incorporated. Knead the dough until well developed, around 10-15 minutes, or in a mixer at medium speed for around 6 minutes. The dough is going to be tough! Cover bowl with cling film and let ferment for 1 hour. 

Line a baking tray with parchment paper and grease slightly. After that, pour the dough onto work surface, flatten, and stretch to about 3 cm thick. Cut into 80gram triangle or square pieces (or any other shape) and place on tray, about 2 cm apart from each other.

Flattened, about 1 inch thick

The rolls will stick to each other towards the end of the proofing, which will reduce the amount of crust, giving a less crusty, softer roll.

Before proofing

Let the rolls proof for about 90 minutes. Preheat oven to 200C so as to be heated at the end of the 90 minutes.

After proofing for about 1 hour

Generously brush the top of the rolls with water. Place the tray into the oven and bake for 15-18 minutes, until the top is golden. Place on cooling rack and let them cool completely.

Just out of the oven, after baking for 16 minutes

These rolls make great sandwich rolls, burger or hot dog buns, as they are soft and tasty.

Show them off to your friends at a barbeque or picnic!

Enjoy!

Traditional Bagels

Traditional Bagels

Making Bagels!

  

For a very long time, I have been wanting to make some bagels, and this week-end I just thought why not!? The only time I had a "real bagel" was when I was on holiday in Montreal, Canada, where my partner and I had some fresh bagels from a bakery which only made bagels. They were delicious, and none of the store-bought things could match that taste. Nowadays it seems all bagels you buy in a story are sweet, when really, they shouldn't be!

I was hoping that, by making them myself, I could get closer to that taste.

My first challenge was to find a good recipe. There is a vast set of recipes online, which all looked delicious. Unfortunately, I had to eliminate a large majority of them as they required some diastatic malt powder, which I was unable to find in any store in my area, or in any UK-based website!!! So, in trying to find a recipe that did not use diastatic malt powder, I came to find an interesting recipe in a specialised blog, "The Fresh Loaf", which suggested you could use Malt Syrup instead of diastatic malt powder.

It was necessary to make a few changes, as there was no bulk fermentation time in the recipe and the technique for making bagels was simply not traditional enough for me!

So here is what I ended up using... with bakers percentages and grams...

RECIPE

Ingredients:

Flour               100%            500gr

Water                60%            300gr

Salt                     2%              1 tsp

Malt Syrup          5%              25gr

Instant yeast      0.6%       1 1/3 tsp

Yield: 8 100gram (~4 ounce) bagels

(Recipe adapted from http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/bagels)

The night before, mix all ingredients (including the malt syrup) together until incorporated. If using a mixer, mix in first speed for 3 minutes, then in second speed for around 5 minutes. If kneading by hand, mix until incorporated, let rest for 30 minutes, and then knead until it becomes a tough, strong, well developed dough.

The dough will be quite tough, because of the low water content but should still be easy to play with! Once the dough is to your liking, let it ferment for 1 hour (more if the room is cold!) in a bowl covered with cling film. 

Just out of the mixer. A tough, strong, well developed dough

After letting the dough rest for 1 hour at room temperature, separate into 100gram (~4 ounce) pieces. You should have about 8 pieces in total.

To shape into a bagel, roll into a long cylinder (longer than you think!) then tamper the edges (press them a bit so they are sealed). Then take the cylinders, wrap it around the widest part of your hand (at the knuckles) and simply stick the two edges to each other with some overlap. Then, keeping the bagels around your hand, just roll it gently on the work surface to seal the two edges together. Now just pull it out of your hand, you should have a nicely shaped bagel!

:Line a tray (or two) with parchment paper. Spray the paper with some oil or dust with cornmeal or semolina (I tried both and my opinion is that oil is better). Place shaped bagels on tray keeping an inch at least between them.

When you're done, place the trays in the fridge for 6 hours or overnight.

Before going into the refrigerator overnight

When you're ready for the next step, remove the bagels from the fridge. Prehead oven to 260C (500F) or as hot as your oven can get. The ideal time the bagels should rest before being boiled is 20 minutes. Any longer and they will become sticky and very flexible. You really want them to stay tough so they can keep their shape when being placed in the saucepan.

So, boil water in a large saucepan. Then, add enough malt syrup into the water until the water looks like weak tea. Make sure its still boiling after this.

Now, just dump the bagels into the saucepan (I did them two by two as this was all the pan could take!). Boil them for 20 seconds or until it floats. Mine were floating from the start (could be because they had too much gas in them), so I just left them in there for 20-25 seconds.

When finished, just fetch the bagels out and place them back onto the tray. If you want some seeds on your bagels (I used sesame and poppy seeds) then this is the time to put them on (while they're still wet and warm!).

Once you've boiled the bagels and sprinkled the seeds, let them rest for a couple of minutes. Then place in the preheated oven and bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden!

Once they are baked, place them on a cooling rack. I think these bagels are best when lukewarm, so don't wait for them to cool down completely! Enjoy with creamcheese or butter or just plain!

I haven't tried freezing them (because they were all gone the same day they were made!) but I don't see any reason why they can't be frozen in a zipped freezer bag.


Thanks for reading!