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.

Rosemary Thyme Bread

With parsley and sage, this bread would complete the Simon and Garfunkle song. I have a huge rosemary bush in my front garden and am always trying to find ways to use it. This weekend I made both a focaccia with an infusion of rosemary, onion, garlic and oil on the top of it and a loaf bread with rosemary and thyme. Since I've talked about focaccia recently, here's the rosemary and thyme bread.

Ingredients:

• 1 T active dry yeast
• 2 cups warm water
• 2 T olive oil
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour (I used King Arthur's white whole wheat flour)
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 T fresh thyme leaves or 1 T dried
• 2 1/2 tsp salt
• about 4 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
  

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. I always add a dollop of honey to my yeast and warm water. I do it by dipping a small whisk into a jar of my honey and using that whisk to stir the yeast into the water.




Stir the olive oil into the yeast mixture. Stir together the whole wheat flour, herbs, salt and 2 cups of the while flour in a medium bowl.
Note that the recipe calls for 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh rosemary. Below you can see a 1/4 cup measuring cup filled with fresh rosemary leaves.


After finely chopping the rosemary, I only have about half of what I need. So I chopped almost the same amount to bring the 1/4 cup to full. It's always important in a recipe to distinguish if they say 1/4 cup fresh rosemary leaves, finely chopped vs. what we have in this recipe: 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh rosemary.



Add the flour/herb mix to the yeast mixture and mix together well with the paddle. Adding flour gradually as needed, change to the dough hook on the mixture and mix on low for about 2 minutes. Move to medium speed and knead with the dough hook for about 8 minutes. If the dough is very sticky, gradually add flour as needed.

Scrape the dough onto a floured surface and knead a little by hand. Let dough rise in a lightly greased bowl for about 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and put it into pans (I used round baking pans) or you can shape it into rounds and let it rise on a cookie sheet for a more primitive looking loaf, or if you have them, you can let it rise in a banneton.

About 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450. When you are ready to put the loaves into the oven, slash across the tops with a sharp knife. Bake for 10 minutes, spraying with water a couple of times during this period.

Reduce the heat to 400 and bake for another 30 - 35 minutes until the loaves are brown.

Remove from pan, cool on a rack, and enjoy.



Note: Sorry about the delay between postings. My youngest daughter got married in the middle of April and I got out of the routine, but I'm back now! I never stopped baking, just stopped posting, so I may go back and fill in some gaps as I have time.

Making Focaccia Bread with Rosemary

Years ago my mother got sourdough starter from San Francisco. It was supposedly over 100 years old at the time. She kept it going by feeding it and using it regularly. When I got out of college and was on my own, she gave me some of the starter. Now I'm a grandma and the starter is about 140 years old.

Today I made focaccia bread with the starter. The recipe won't be so easy to share because I can't give you the starter.

Many cookbooks today have recipes for short-term starters - such as mixing 1 tsp active dry yeast with 1/2 cup warm water and 1/4 cup of flour. Stir this together and leave it for about an hour. It should be bubbly and good to use at that time.

Here's how I made the focaccia:

• Stir 1 tsp active dry yeast into 1 cup warm water and let sit for about 10 minutes.
• Put 3/4 cup sourdough starter in the mixing bowl.
• Add the yeast mixture and 3 T olive oil. Stir together well.
• Add about 3 - 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 3 T finely chopped rosemary leaves, 2 tsp coarse sea salt.
• Change to the dough hook when needed.
• Sprinkle some flour on the counter and knead a little by hand.
• Put dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 1 1/4 hour.
• Turn risen dough onto oiled cookie sheet with sides (11 X 17) and flatten it to fill the pan.
• Allow to rise again about another hour.
• About 30 minutes before baking, preheat oven to 425.

If you have a baking stone, that really helps this bread cook well. When bread has risen, use the tips of your fingers to dimple the dough.

Drizzle the bread with 2 T extra virgin olive oil and 1 to 1 1/4 tsp coarse sea salt.

Put sprigs of fresh rosemary all over the surface.

Put bread in oven and spray the oven walls with cold water from a spritzer bottle three times every three minutes during the first 10 minutes of baking.

Bake in total for about 20 - 25 minutes. During the last 10 minutes you can put the bread directly on the baking stone (I always forget to, but it crisps the bottom).