Sunday, August 23, 2009

Ethiopian Honey Bread: Dabo

This recipe is featured on epicurious.com this month. Being a bread baker, I decided to try it. I corrected a typo on the recipe and have one other suggestion. Here are the ingredients and the recipe:
  • 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
  • 1/4 cup canola oil
  • 2 packets active dry yeast (2 scant T)
  • 2 1/2 cups warm water
  • 7 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 3/4 cup honey
Mix the warm water, canola oil and 2 T of yeast in a small bowl.

In the large bowl of your mixture put the flour and salt and fit the mixer with the dough hook.

Meanwhile, chop up the rosemary and toast it in a hot skillet for about 30 seconds. By the time I did all of this, the yeast was ready to use.

Turn on the mixer and stir the flour and salt together. With the dough hook turning, gradually add the yeast mixture. When you do, the bread looks ready to finish, but you still have to add the honey and rosemary.

Add the honey which makes the solid looking dough suddenly wet and very sticky. Also add the rosemary.

I found at this point that I needed to knead in with the dough hook an additional approx. 3/4 cup flour to make the dough able to be handled.




When the dough is ready, put it into a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and allow it to rise about one hour. At the end of the hour, turn the dough out of the bowl and gently shape it into two loaves. Put these loaves in greased 9 X 4 inch loaf pans. Again cover and allow to rise about 20 minutes. During the 20 minutes, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.



Bake the bread at 400 for about 28 - 30 minutes. When you remove the pans from the oven, lay them on their side for about 15 minutes to cool in the pans. The recipe says to turn them upside down in the pans, but mine won't sit on rounded tops so I didn't even try that. I simply put them on their sides.



At the end of the fifteen minute cooling period, turn them out of their pans and allow the rest of the cooling to take place on the rack. The whole kitchen is redolent of my bees' delicious honey at this very moment! I can't wait to eat the bread.

Epicurious says that the Ethiopians eat this bread for breakfast with a chick pea spread.

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