Usually, we do the bread for the week for eating it at breakfast. It should be an interesting bread (who wants same-old all the time?), should go well with butter, jam, Nutella or peanut butter. Hopefully, it should last us the whole week without getting too dry or too chewy.
Now, this time the brief was slightly different: We bought clams, and we didn't want to do them with either rice or pasta, so bread was a good idea. Something that would help soaking up the sauce, too. Like a French baguette... alright, we could have just bought one, but that would be too easy, right?
I was looking up a few ideas from my cooking books, knowing that you won't be able to do a baguette unless you prepare the dough the day before. I found two interesting suggestions, one being Portuguese and the other one from Lebanon. I wonder if that is a good idea...
So, here we go: 350 grams of strong white flour, 50 grams of barley flour. One teaspoon of salt, 1 table spoon of sugar. 2 table spoons of olive oil. Extra virgin, obviously! Prepare the yeast as usual (or as per instructions), 100 ml cold water, 50 ml boiling water, 2 table spoons of sugar and 3 table spoons of yeast. I'm happy that since the last time, my yeast does behave as it should. 10 minutes in a warm place and you see it bubbling away!
Mix everything and attempt making a nice, smooth, elastic and not overly sticky dough out of it. Chances are you won't succeed, because I didn't allow for sufficient liquid. No, no beer. No cider either. Instead, I opted for more olive oil (still extra virgin and, if I may add, I prefer unfiltered). Don't ask me how much oil I added in the end, I'd say about 2 more table spoons. Once the dough was okay. I smeared it with more olive oil and left it covered to rest for one hour.
After that, I split the dough in half, as I expected we would want only half of the bread with dinner, while the other half would serve a few days of breakfast. Also, I didn't want the dough balls to be that big (as a matter of fact, the Lebanese recipe suggested splitting the dough in 12!). As you can see, the result did have some resemblance with Naam (but that would be totally different again!)
Again, rub it in olive oil (did I mention 'virgin'?) and leave it resting covered while the oven gets preheated to 230 degree. Yes, let's turn it up full blast!
Just before slipping the 2 breads in the oven I sprayed them with cold water, so the top would not turn to charcoal prematurely. I left it then in the oven for about 15 minutes and gave it another 10 minutes at about 150 degree. See, I did say in the beginning that today we were doing something somehow differently.
We do enjoy the result and it did serve the purpose brilliantly. It's soft, but not too soft, and it soaks nicely. It has a very subtle sweetness, too. And after cutting I even found a suitable name: Evil Bunny Bread. But then again, that's just me...
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