Piadina - Italian Flat Bread - A Hot Trend.

Want to know what the hottest trend in cafe eats is these days? Piadina!


Years ago, it was focaccia. Then came Turkish bread. Somehow, panini slipped its end in and then the cafe sandwich press made all of these bready dishes common and horrid. And let's not forget wraps and lavash and other abominations that happened after the ingredients became available commercially.


Face it: a real focaccia, lovingly grilled or at least toasted under the broiler and then filled with fresh ingredients was a very tasty thing. Ditto the other formats. Now? They're all as cheap as chips and really not tasty at all.


I'm not a food snob at all. I used to be! However, food is all about practical, economical and sensible ways to deliver a top grade and healthy feed every day for yourself and your household, with the occasional frippery and fun, just to keep everyones' mouth happy, isn't it?


Enter the piadina! It's just an unleavened flatbread, which in itself is unexciting. How it can be loaded with all kinds of exciting and tasty  fresh and seasonal ingredients is another dimension in flavour and texture that really needs to be explored. Trendy, tasty and about three minutes of actual cooking time. Fast food that's actually healthy!


This is where you do some Google-fu. There are some places around Sydney, and certainly many other cities, who have cafes who charge ridiculous amounts for a piadina. So, if you want part with at least ten bucks for some meat, cheese, snow pea sprouts and trendy ingredient du jour, then you go ahead, you fashionable fool. For everyone else who has a brain, loves to cook and loves to entertain with something new, I'll show you how to make them for only $0.30 each - plus fillings! You can even make only one for yourself to try out at if you like. It's a top way to use up cold cuts from Christmas roasts. Check out the trendy places online so that you can get some hot ideas for tasty ingredients.


Traditionally, piadina are made with lard. Purists will say that only lard can be used. In these health conscious days, I'll base the recipe on olive oil. It's almost as tasty, and you'll live longer and not be quite so lardy (pun intended). You can cook them on the flat part of your bbq, if you can make it hot enough, or you can cook them in a non-stick frypan. The results will be quite similar.


Here's the insanely simple recipe for 2011's trendiest bread item:

• 100 grams plain flour
  
• 20 mls olive oil
  
• 35 mls warm water (hotter than you would use for yeast dishes, say 45C-60C)
  
• 1 gram salt - very optional
  
• The above makes one only. You can scale it up to make more. Adjust water to match your chosen flour.

Making the dough:

• Put the flour in a pile, make a hole in the middle, pour in the water and the oil (and salt if that's your thing), combine and knead until smooth.
  
• You do not need to flour the bench as the oil will make the dough slippery enough.
  
• Wrap the smooth and well kneaded dough in cling film, let it rest for about thirty minutes. Kneading is done in about one to two minutes.
  
• After resting, press the dough out into something like a circle and finish rolling it out nice and thin and as close to a circle as you can manage. Perfection isn't a requirement here - rustic is cool.
  
• Get your bbq hotplate or frying pan nice and hot and prep your fillings because, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to happen quickly!

Here's some hints for using festive roast leftovers:

• Ham, cheese, snow pea sprouts, apple sauce
  
• Roast beef, hot English mustard, lettuce, sliced Roma tomato, cheese
  
• Turkey breast, cranberry sauce, Camembert or Brie, snow pea sprouts, cheese
  
• Chicken, salami, dried pressed tofu - not in the same dish - and more
  
• And just about anything else you can dream up!

Cooking time:

• Drop your thinly rolled dough onto the cooking surface and let it get a few good dark brown spots from cooking on one side. Don't try to brown the whole thing else it will turn into parchment and be inedible.
  
• Flip it over, and start adding ingredients on one half. You can keep the greens and crispy ingredients out until after it's off the heat, unless you like soggy greens.
  
• After adding fillings, fold one half up and over, to make a 'sandwich'.
  
• Give it about thirty seconds to one minute or so and then flip the whole arrangement over so that the top of the sandwich is cooked a little too.
  
• Serve and enjoy.

Usually, your meat fillings should be precooked. There is not enough time during this process to cook meat adequately. It's better to prepare fillings after making the dough, during the dough resting time. It will make a much better result and be far less harrowing for you, especially if you're trying to make six lunches on one frypan.


If you're into stone-ground flour, macro-organic, wholemeal, and other exciting and purportedly karma-improving flours, then you go right ahead and use those. I'm sure that they will be extra tasty and will give a whole new and exciting mouthfeel to this traditional and simple flatbread. Tell me how you go with those - and tell me how you had to adjust the cooking process. I would love to share your success with other readers!


Best of luck, and if you have any questions, please post those in the comments section and I'll be ever so happy to help!


Cheers!!

Higher hydration bread techniques.

I've been a bit lax about updating this blog lately as there really haven't been any exciting new things that I thought worthy of sharing.

However, today I had a hankering for some Turkish Bread. Nice bread with an open crumb and huge air bubbles. I looked up some recipes and found that it's a bit more labour intensive than I really wanted to deal with this evening during making dinner, so here's the details of a high(er) hydration bread experiment.

High hydration doughs tend to make for those larger bubbles present in ciabatta and turkish bread. High hydration is increasing the water content to say 60% or 70% by weight compared to the flour weight in the recipe.

Generally, it's better to use a better quality bread flour rather than the low cost white flour from the supermarket. However, I didn't have any of the good stuff in stock so I have had to make do with regular white flour for the sake of this experiment.

Here's the ingredients and the technique:
500 gms flour
350 mls water
2 tablespoons of yeast
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil.

It's better, in this case, to put the sugar and yeast into solution in tepid water so that it can be added in two stages during the creation of the dough.

The salt should be added to the flour prior to adding the liquid. If you're doing it manually, sift it in. If you're using a machine and being lazy, let the dry ingredients be combined at low blade speed for a minute or two before you add the water. Experiment! It's lots of fun.

Turn out the very sticky and shiny dough to an oiled bowl and let it rise in the usual manner for about thirty minutes.

Then stretch it and fold it back over itself twice and let it rise again.

And again.

And again.

Yes - that's right - four risings.

Divide the dough into as many 'loaves' as you wish, decorate and slash to suit your taste. If you split the dough in two and draw the halves each gently into two sort of rectangular shapes then you're about right. Be gentle handling the dough to prepare the loaves. You've worked hard for bigger bubbles so don't burst them by being ham-fisted. Sprinkle some flour lightly onto the formed loaves and allow to rise for the last time for about one hour.

Baking time is around 35 to 40 minutes at 220C conventional. Fan forced is not really a good idea.

Spray cool water every five to ten minutes for the first twenty minutes for a slightly crispier crust.

The resulting crust texture is firm and crunchy with bubbles of around 5 mm. Lovely taste. Good mouthfeel. Excellent for sandwiches owing to the crunch of the crust and the gently tender 'meat' of the bread.

I'll make another batch with a slightly different technique in a few days' time and report back.


Enjoy!