Nabatean Water Bread

Water Bread

Make your own bread if you can, if not really good pita bread.  I did cut this recipe down because we are bread fiends in the house.  What isn’t used for this recipe will be gobbled down in a matter of hours.

Translation:

Take 1 (makkuk) 7.5 lbs. of good quality samidh flour and sift in a big wooden bowl (jafna).  Mix with it 3 uqiyyas (3 oz) yeast, and add 30 dirhams (3 oz) salt that has been dissolved in water and strained.  (strained to remove dirt and sand).  (Nasrallah, p. 119)

Ingredients:

I cut the original recipe in half.

3.25 C flour

1.5 oz yeast

1.5 oz salt

2.25 C water

Redaction:

I made bread from Emmer flour mixed half and half with white.  Emmer flour traces have been found in the middle east through Italy (https://www.ancientgrains.com/emmer-history-and-origin/) with a nutty flavor.  It is a specialty grain, that isn’t easy to find in the US.  I had to order mine.  Some recipes have spelt flour instead of emmer.  If neither spelt or emmer is available use whole wheat mixed white flour.  

For the bread, I mixed flour, water salt and yeast until a nice smooth dough formed from about 10 minutes of kneeding.

Next, I let sit for 90 minutes, punched the risen dough down, forming dough balls roughly the half the size of my fist.

Here you can see I used parchment paper underneath. I do this with all my breads now. As far as I know, this is not period. Bread would have been made in an oven, on hot coals, wrapped around a large hot rock or Tandori depending on where you were.

The small loaves of white taste like a good sourdough bread.  The emmer flour loaves taste like a whole wheat bread.  I went with the white flour loaves for two reasons.  I love sourdough and my daughter ate all the emmer flour loaves. 

This recipe I am using the small loaves for called for scorched bread. As you can see my scorched is just extra brown. Everything in period was used. Nothing left to waste. I didn’t scorch my bread because I don’t want my house smelling of burnt bread. I did take the bread hand loafs to a dark bottom as best I could. If you find yourself with scorched bread save it for the following recipe Tharida Shamiyya (of the Levant) also known as Spiced Honey Meat over Bread