Pide ? June?s Fresh from the Oven challenge!

This month?s challenge was hosted by Pei Lin, a.k.a Mrs Ergül who can be found here! And the challenge: Pide, a Turkish bread. In fact, Iffet from My Turkish Kitchen explains it well:

Pide is the special Turkish bread for Ramadan. During the holy month of Ramadan, you could see long lines in front of bakeries. Those people wait to have one of these breads to break their fast with it. The smell of pide 'force' you to get one even you don't think about buying it.

I basically stuck to Iffet?s recipe, using a mixer and dough hooks, because, as mentioned, the dough was sticky, but the tip to set your hands really did the trick and stops this! The original recipe used American cups and after looking up several conversion sites, no-one seemed to agree, so I sort of made it up! Below are the original measurements with mine in brackets.

Ingredients:

4 cups (to 5 cups) All Purpose Flour (450g-500g plain flour)
1 and 3/4 cups Warm Water (400ml-450ml)
1/2 stick Butter ( melted ) (65g)
1/2 tablespoon Instant Yeast
1 tablespoon Sugar (I?d reduce this to half if I made it again!)
1/2 tablespoon Salt
Topping:
Black and White Sesame Seeds

In a large mixing bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients.
Add the melted butter and warm water into this mixture. I then used a hand mixer with dough hooks to combine for several minutes, until the mixture becomes springy. The dough should be sticky. 

Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and keep it in a warm place to rise to double its size.
Knead the dough again until it is bubble free.
Place parchment paper on a 13" by 10.5" baking tray then cover with the dough. Try to flatten it to cover the surface, and, if your fingers stick, wet them first: A great trick!
With a knife, draw around the edge of the dough, cutting deeply. Then cut into squares, again, ensuring the knife goes nearly all the way through.

Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top.
Preheat the oven to 350F
Let rise the dough for half an hour in the tin
Bake it for 30 minutes or until it turns light brown
Take the pide out of the oven and let it cool for 20 minutes; cover it with a clean kitchen towel to keep it soft.

This is the first bread I?ve made that actually stays nice and soft and has lots of good air bubbles inside it! I was really impressed with how simple it was, but wouldn't use so much sugar next time. You could even turn it into a focaccia type bread easily by adding chopped sun-dried tomatoes and olives to the mix before you pop it in the tine, and making little dimples by poking your fingers in! Then covering with a drizzle of olive oil before baking.

I served it alongside a bowl of Chorizo, Red Pepper and Tomato pasta, rich and tomatoey with a kick ? a perfect summer recipe -  and the bread was beautiful alongside it.

Thanks for finding this one Pei Lin, I?ll definitely be making it again as it was so easy and worked brilliantly. Don?t forget to look at the round-up of all our trials and tribulations with this one at Fresh from the Oven!