Recipe Source: Patent, Greg. A Baker's Odyssey. John Wiley and Sons, 2007 pp. 114 - 5
This is the first real "bread" type recipe I've tried to make, although there isn't any yeast so people may feel that it doesn't count. This recipe was a re-creation of a dish that the author's Iraqi grandmother used to make. The story behind them is very nice and kind of sad, but the bracelets themselves are delicious. I decided to make them when my husband's parents came to visit and I needed to serve some sort of starch dish. The recipe was actually extremely easy with the food processor. While I seriously doubt that the author's grandmother had a food processor in her one-room apartment in Shanghai back in the 1940s, but if she did I'm sure she would have used it. After having made and served this recipe, I learned of a blogging event celebrating "small breads." Well, these bracelets are certainly small, so I will go ahead and enter them! The event is being hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen.
While this recipe is very easy, the first time I tried to make it I really screwed it up. I put the ingredients into the food processor, I processed them, but they weren't coming together into a dough. They were coming together into a soup, a pasty, unappealing soup. I added more flour. No results. I added more flour. Again, nothing. Eventually I stuck my finger into the repulsive mix and tasted it. I hadn't been using flour. I'd been using confectioner's sugar! The two ingredients were in identical canisters and while the flour canister was labeled, the label had fallen off. At any rate, I washed out my food processor and did it again, with actual flour this time, and everything worked out well. 
The only two changes that I made to this recipe were the addition of some cumin and garlic salt to the egg wash and the omission of sprinkled sesame seeds. The sesame seeds were omitted due to a dietary restriction on the part of one of my guests. The cumin and garlic salt came about because the original recipe called for salt to be added to the egg wash, so I used garlic salt to add a little more flavor. I added the cumin because cumin makes everything better. I would definitely say that these were a hit; I'd expected to have enough left over to serve them again the next night, but there were none left for me to clean up.
Savory Bracelets (makes 24 bracelets; approx. cost per serving not available)
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon turbinado sugar
9 tablespoons butter, cut into tablespoon-sized pieces
1/2 cup water
1 large egg, beaten with a dash of garlic salt and 1/4 teaspoon cumin
Equipment:
- Food processor
- Baking sheets
- Pastry brush
- Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar in a food processor with the regular metal blade. Process 5 seconds.
- Add the butter and pulse 10 times. The mixture should resemble fine meal.
- With the machine running, add the water in a steady stream. Process 1 minute after you've finished adding the water.
- Divide the dough into 24 pieces and shape into balls. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and let stand for 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Using your hands, roll each piece of dough into a log around 7 inches long and 1/2 inch wide, with tapered ends. This is very similar to the clay "snakes" you made in kindergarten.
- Bring the ends together, overlapping by about 1/2 to 1 inch. Pinch tightly to seal.
- Set the rings on the baking sheets and brush with the egg mixture.
- Bake about 30 minutes, rotating once (top-bottom and front-back.) Cool completely on the baking sheets.
- Serve. These will apparently keep well in an airtight container 2 - 3 weeks, but they won't last that long.
This sounds like my kind of recipe. I hate dealing with yeast and yet I love bread. I like the shape these come in too. I'm bookmarking this. What do you think about using whole wheat flour?
Posted by: cookinpanda | July 28, 2008 at 09:05 PM