Friday, March 20, 2009

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST? Puffy Bread

Again, I ran out of ideas for breakfast. I'll be the first to admit that I have spoiled my children.

They hate repetition. Oh sure, if I rotate meals, they're fine with that. But cereal 4 times in a row just brings a revolt.

One thing I have found to keep them at bay is making this wonderfully easy and quick bread. It can be made in a stand mixer or even by hand. But I tend to use my bread machine so I can do other important things in the morning like taking in the goodness that is my morning coffee.

This recipe is my loose interpretation of pita bread. My kids love how it puffs up when it cooks. So "Puffy Bread" was born.

Here it goes:

Puffy Bread
Prepper

1.5 cups water
1/2-1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vital wheat gluten or white flour
2-2.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 teaspoons yeast (NOT rapid!)

Place all ingredients in bread mixer and put on "dough" setting.

When machine has mixed and kneaded for about 10 minutes, stop and restart and let it go through it's entire cycle. You want it to knead for at least 20 minutes to develop the gluten.

You want the dough to be firm yet still a little bit tacky. You want the small amount of wetness because it is the steam that makes it puff up.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

This should make 6-7 breads. Break off your dough and roll into balls. Flatten the balls (I use a rolling pin. Others use their hands.) into discs that are about 1/4 inches tall. I'll admit, there is a learning curve. If you make them too thick, they come out like hamburger buns. If you make them too thin, they are just a great big cracker. Neither are bad options, but if your kid wants to fill his puffy bread with cheese or peanut butter, things become difficult when you don't have the right kind of bread to work with.

Place the discs on a lightly greased sheet pan.

Now, let the bread rest while your oven heats up to it's firey, hot temperature of 500 degrees.

Once your oven is the right temp, put the bread in and then turn it down to 400 degrees.

In my oven these take about 12 minutes to puff up and brown a little. My mother in law's oven takes 18. So just watch the bread. I have found that once they puff up, you can let them stay in the oven another 2-3 minutes to firm up and you've got a great pocket to fill.

As you can see, this is more of a technique than a recipe. Feel free to change according to your family's tastes.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Polly,

    Thank you for stopping by Apron Strings and Other Ties That Bind and entering my "Spring Fever" giveaway.

    I'm going to give your Puffy Bread recipe a try...I enjoy pita so this sounds great.

    ReplyDelete