This is a really nice, earthy, savoury morning pastry or anytime snack!
Category: Bread
Pain d’Épi (Wheat stalk bread)
This French classic makes for a fun change, and still super easy. The water-spraying serves to make a crust form.
Irish Potato Bread
This makes for a very satisfying, versatile breakfast. It doesn’t take that long to boil potatoes so it’s reasonably quick, but steps 1-2 can just as well be done the previous evening (cover and leave on the counter overnight, there’s no need to refrigerate). Use 2T olive oil instead of butter in step 2 to make it vegan/dairy-free.
If you prefer sweet breakfasts, garnish instead with berries, apple slices, honey, maple syrup, cream, cinnamon, grated chocolate…
Chocolate Buns
Amazing fresh out of the oven, but if you make too many for immediate consumption, they can be allowed to cool and then frozen. To reheat, pop them in the pre-heated oven straight from the freezer for a few minutes till heated through.
Khubz Arabi
This is different from the inimitable “rabtet khubz” (bag of bread) from the bakery, but identical to the hot, puffed bread that is brought to the table straight from the oven at a restaurant.
A language note: “khubz” is just the Arabic word for “bread”, any kind of bread. It doesn’t mean this specific type unless you specify “khubz arabi”. “Khubz franji” is French bread, for instance. “Khubz marquq” is the traditional, super thin Lebanese mountain bread. And so on. Some people drop the general word in conversation (sometimes innocently, often pedantically) as if it were a technical term—don’t.
Basic Pizza Dough
This is my go-to pizza/flatbread dough recipe when I want a thick soft crust and I have time to let it rise. Sometimes I only leave it for 1/2 hour and it’s still just fine: I’ll prepare it first, put it somewhere warm while I prepare the other ingredients, and then get on with it. If it affected the result, I never noticed!
As shown below, you can freeze the dough when it’s ready, for future use. This is useful if you made more than you need, but it needs to thaw overnight, so it’s not really a time-saver. On the other hand, if you use baking powder instead of yeast, you have a thin-crust dough that’s ready to use immediately. In this case, make sure to spread it thinly.
Soft Pretzels
I had no idea how easy pretzels are to make until I tried. These are incredible fresh out of the oven, and it’s great to be able to customise one’s toppings. They also keep well till the next day.
Bobalki
The Slovak Christmas Eve supper consists of twelve meatless dishes representing the twelve Apostles, and these bread balls sweetened by honey are one of them. It seems however that they predate Christianity, and in the central European Pagan tradition were made around the winter Solstice to communicate with the ancestors.
Ground walnuts can replace the poppy seeds; in which case, skip step 8!
Pompe à Huile
Christmas in Provence is famous for its thirteen desserts, symbolizing Christ and the twelve Apostles. The exact items tend to vary from place to place or even family to family, but they typically include nuts, dried and fresh fruits, calissons (marzipan-like candy), quince paste, black and white nougat, and the crown of them all, the sweet bread known as pompe à huile.
Sweet Galette
This slightly odd pastry is very mild and pleasant. It’s great for tea- or coffee-time, and you can sprinkle more sugar or even jam or chocolate on top if you have a sweet tooth. The double cream + milk can be substituted with 3/4C half-and-half (total, not each), and you could also just use 3/4 milk and leave out the cream altogether.
Challah
This traditional, slightly sweet Jewish bread is eaten on Sabbath and holidays.
Quick Loaf
This is a simple and very quick recipe to make surprisingly good bread. The texture is compact so it’s good for slicing and spreading (and toasting), making it handy for a homemade breakfast. The sugar in step 1 is to feed the yeast, it can be substituted with a teaspoon of honey, or if necessary left out altogether.
Olive & Herb Bread
This is a tasty variation on a simple leavened loaf.
Dinner Rolls
Though the rising time (2 hours in total) makes this a “slow” recipe, it only requires a few minutes of involvement on your part, so it’s an easy way to impress—the result is truly exciting, fresh out of the oven.
Naan
If you like Indian food, you probably love naan bread, and I never thought it was this easy to make at home. The best thing about this recipe is how beautifully it freezes: I like to make a big batch on a day when I have time, seal them in a tub and freeze them. Then when I need a quick bite, especially for breakfast, I’ll preheat the oven, put one naan in it straight from the freezer, and it takes only 5 minutes for it to be as warm and fluffy as it it had just been baked. Then I can top it with whatever I have on hand: a fried egg, avocado, zaatar…
If you’re having them as a side, you can optionally fancy up the baking bread in step 7 by brushing it with olive oil, butter, or garlic-infused oil, and sprinkling with nigella or sesame seeds.
Use coconut milk to keep it dairy-free.
Crackers
You can use these homemade crackers anyway you like, of course– the labneh is a wink at my fellow Levantines. Labneh is strained yogurt (moreso than Greek yogurt) which we have with bread, drizzled with olive oil, for breakfast or in a mezze.
These can make great party food as you really can customize the flavours in myriad creative ways. For instance, using grated cheese as a topping will result in cheese crackers. Why not also try finely chopped sundried tomato, or rubbing the dough with crushed garlic, etc — the important thing is to lightly top the dough, and not cover it (we’re not making a pizza), so the crackers still bake to a crisp.
Careful, if you underbake them, they will be soft. Still good, but not “cracking”.
Kesra – Moroccan Anise Bread
