How to bake an Uzbek flatbread in a conventional oven?Recipe from the site
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What difficulties and unforeseen circumstances may arise?
What is important to know to get a good result?
What are the features of a traditional tandoor and how to create similar baking conditions in a conventional oven?
In Uzbekistan, flatbreads are similar to each other in about the same way as people who bake them are similar to each other. Despite the apparent external similarity, each has its own distinctive features, its own character and appearance.
But in kneading yeast dough, there are general rules that do not depend on geography, but on the conditions necessary for the development of yeast. For example, sifting flour before kneading the dough is an absolutely necessary action, because the flour is saturated with air - after all, without oxygen, yeast does not develop.
The favorable temperature for yeast differs from normal room temperature. Therefore, water or milk for the dough is heated. A spoonful of salt for about two kilograms of flour is enough.
And dry yeast - only half a bag, calculated per kilogram of flour, that is, four times less than the norm offered by yeast producers.
Stir yeast granules, grind between fingers
Knead the dough as usual
And knead a little more thoroughly. Then everything, as usual, is wrapped in a blanket or covered and put in a warm place.
There is less yeast, more salt, so the dough is suitable for about a couple of hours, until it increases in volume by about 2.5-3 times.
To divide the dough into pieces, it is better to stretch it into a sausage.
Three cakes will be made from this amount of dough.
The dough is tucked to the bottom, as if pulling the top and forming a ball
Like this.
Now the ball on its side and roll it, pressing it with your right hand against the table, so that a tight bundle is formed - the future bottom of the cake. They only hold the dough with their left hand, but try not to squeeze the future top.
The dough should come up again. Better to cover it with a linen towel to keep it cool.
Press down the middle of the approached ball with your fist
And then - work on weight. We hold the dough by the rim and rotate it in our hands - the dough stretches under its own weight, gradually turning into a cake.
Many bakers are convinced that a rolling pin and yeast dough are incompatible things.
But it is the middle that rolls out with a rolling pin of a special shape - that part of the cake, which is supposed to be hard and crispy.
But you can do the same with your fingertips - first walk around the rim and further, closer and closer to the center.
So that the middle does not rise, it is punctured with a special stamp called chekich.
Chekichi have a variety of patterns. The combination of patterns is sometimes used as a signature by professional bakers.
But most often the pattern is used, which in the east has been a symbol of the sun and infinity since ancient times.
The surface of the cake can be greased with milk.
Sedona, or as it is also called nigella, nigella, is a traditional seasoning for flatbread. It is popularly believed that sedona improves heart function and has a positive effect on digestion.
In fact, any product, any spice is a medicine. But the main medicine is the eater's appetite and good mood. Here sesame makes the cake more appetizing. Why not add sesame seeds?
The bottom of the flatbread is moistened with salted water and baked in a tandoor.
What is a tandoor? A thick-walled earthenware jug used as a furnace. Firewood is laid through the neck, smoke comes out through the neck. Through the same neck, the baker puts the cakes, but not on the underside, but on the hot walls.
From well-warmed thick and heat-consuming walls, the bottom of the cake is baked and becomes dry and crispy. The top of the cake is baked under the influence of hot air, which is practically motionless in a closed tandoor and in the infrared rays of the coals smoldering at the bottom of the tandoor.
Of course, the conditions in conventional ovens are very different from those in the tandoor. Standard metal baking trays are relatively thin, they accumulate so much heat that you can burn your finger. When almost a kilogram of room temperature dough is placed on a baking sheet, it cools down rapidly, taking on the temperature of a dough with a significantly higher heat capacity. Further, the top of the cake is baked even faster than the bottom, but it should be exactly the opposite.
A hot pizza stone - it seems that this is the salvation. It is made of real stone or modern ceramics, which is not afraid of sudden changes in temperature, is not very important. Its heat capacity is important. Will the heat accumulated during the preheating time be enough to bake the bottom of the cake or not?
I have two such stones.
The second has a domed lid and is collectively called a "bread oven". Well, not an oven, of course, but a baking dish - that's how it would be more correct.
The pot must be preheated in the oven before baking. I warmed up to a temperature of 210C, because I know that most bakers plant cakes in a tandoor at this temperature of its walls. Bakers, of course, do not measure the temperature, but I did - I was interested. At a lower temperature, the cake sticks tightly and then does not want to detach from the wall. With a larger one, on the contrary, the bottom dries very quickly and the cake falls off the wall or dome of the tandoor.
The cake, as soon as it is in the oven, begins to rise rapidly, the rim grows especially well.
But the thickness of the pizza stone and the pan from the pan for baking bread is still less than the thickness of the tandoor wall. Therefore, they should continue to be heated, to maintain the required temperature. The oven is now at 210C, but heating occurs due to forced convection of hot air flows.
I have already said that the air in the tandoor is practically motionless, the heat from the heated and rarefied air is very slowly transferred to the surface of the cake. More often it turns red due to infrared radiation, which the baker can easily control - he can cover the coals with ash or even a small sheet of iron for a while, he can inflate the coals, he can cover the neck of the tandoor and vice versa - open and ventilate, but not to cool there is air in it, but in order to ensure the flow of oxygen to the coals and increase the intensity of their combustion.
In a convection oven, it is impossible to control the baking speed of the cake surface. As a result, it happened too quickly, in just 8-10 minutes, and the middle of the cake puffed up, rose, like a Middle Eastern pita puffs up. In essence, this is a marriage, albeit an edible one.
During the same time, the surface of the cake under the warmed-up hood has just started to turn yellow. The middle didn't even think to swell, like a flatbread baked on a pizza stone. Now you can remove the cap and brown the top - it will take 6-8 minutes.
As a result, the cake has an absolutely correct surface color and is baked properly.
Look - and the bottom is the same color as the top.
You know, even if you don’t bake cakes in such a device or don’t bake them in the oven at all, you can still benefit from the article you read. Look, on the left - a tortilla that was baked on a pizza stone. The bottom remained unbaked, almost white. And on the right is a flat cake that was baked under a ceramic bell. Its bottom has the same color as the surface.
But it's not just the color! This bottom crunches as it should, the cake smell is very similar to the smell of a cake from a real tandoor.
We should try to bake a regular loaf in this device!
But what about the third cake? It was baked on a regular stainless steel baking sheet. Here is the result.
Of course, now there are both non-stick and silicone baking trays. They sell silicone mats separately, but you can use ordinary baking paper to prevent sticking. Only the bottom of the cake will not bake better from this, it will remain half-baked.
Probably, the cake that was baked on a pizza stone could have been baked better. For example, the first step would be to cover its surface with foil. But the one that was baked under the lid turned out to be just perfect! I am very pleased with the result. In fact, this vessel with a domed lid is like a mini-tandoor. What difference does it make if the walls of the tandoor are heated from the inside or they are heated from the outside - even with the same hot air currents? After all, the conditions that are created for baking bread or other products are important, first of all: the temperature and humidity of the air, the rate of heat supply to the contacting surfaces and the ability to regulate the process.
