PIDE BREAD

go straight to the recipe

This recipe comes from the wonderful Australian recipe writer, and Middle Eastern aficionado, the late Greg Malouf, first drawn to my attention by my friend and marvellous cook Diana Hetzel.

Since that time, we have turned it into multiple incarnations, white sandwich loaf, so brilliant I prefer it to my Japanese sando bread, fabulous focaccia, crispy and crunchy with loads of our best extra virgin salt and spices or salt and herbs. We also roll/push it out very thin and make a crunchy sort of flat bread.

This is a very wet sticky dough and handling it with wet or oiled hands is helpful, and it does require a bit of extra flour if your shaping it.

I’m certain we haven’t exhausted the incarnations of this wonderful bread.

FIRST PUBLISHED 2008 galaxy guides – AO 20 NOVEMBER 2024

ingredients

makes 2:4 medium loaves

8g:16g dried yeast
20g:40g caster sugar
375g:750g warm water
50g:100g EV olive oil + extra for finishing
480g:960g strong flour + about another 100g – 150g for kneading
5g:10g fine sea salt, or poppy, fennel or onion seeds

 

PLEASE NOTE: if you are going to make 2 sando tins the 960g flour batch is just a little too much for the tins and you risk getting it stuck and wrecking one of your loaves. When you have finished forming the dough, before you fill your tins take out 150g of the mix and cook it in another method.

This dough is divine fried in clean oil and served with honey, Golden or Maple Syrup, or just rolled through cinnamon sugar….it used to be a special breakfast treat when I was a governess on Mabel Creek Station in 1964.

PICTURED LEFT the fully risen pide dough

super sticky

Weigh the yeast, sugar and water into the large bowl of your electric mixer and whisk it until the yeast is dissolved, then whisk in the oil. This is a very wet dough so you will use your k-beater or creaming beater and not your dough hook. Add about half of the flour mix well, add the salt and remaining flour and work until smooth. Cover and leave in a warm place until doubled in volume.

Dust your work surface with flour and scrape the dough into the middle of the flour. Using a bowl scraper work the dough until it no longer sticks to the board.

Divide into 4:2, shape into the proper shape and place them well apart on a silicon sheet or baking sheets covered with baking parchment.

Working with clean hands, pour some olive oil over the top and with your fingers press hard against the dough pushing right to the tray to make deep indentations.

Scatter salt or seeds over the top and allow to prove again.

preheat oven to 220°C
Bake until golden brown on the tops and bottoms of the bread. Cool on racks.

PICTURED ABOVE….scraping the dough onto a work surface
PICTURED LEFT….THE DOUGH, PORTIONED AND READY FOR SHAPING INTO INTO TRADITIONAL PIDE LOAVES BELOW LEFT 
PICTURED BELOW THE TRADITIONAL PIDE BREAD SHAPING

OTHER INCARNations

There is nothing like bread straight from the oven, torn apart, dunked in olive oil and dukkha. Equally, to mop a sauce in the absence of other starch, brilliant.

But, there is much more to this bread. If I want to grill it I try to make it the day before…but this bread makes the best Mediteranean:Middle Eastern tapas:mezez plate. If I’m going to grill the bread I go easy on the amount of oil and salt I use shaping the bread.

PICTURED BELOW….THE TRADITIONAL PIDE BREAD Sliced and grilled for tapas and mezez
PICTURED BELOW….TRADITIONAL LOAVES

ABOUT

We have 42 years history at the highest level
in the food and wine industry and the passion for our craft remains undiminished…
read more

ON cuisine-extreme

NEWSLETTER

Subscribe to our newsletter
to get the latest news, tips, and advice.
Click here TO SUBSCRIBE
 
.……… ann_oliver

COPYRIGHT © TEXT AND IMAGES ANN OLIVER 2024 UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED