Persian · Bread
Nan-e Barbari
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 350 g water at 30C (86F)
- 7 g instant yeast
- 10 g fine sea salt
- 15 g sunflower oil
- 15 g plain flour, for the roomal glaze
- 200 g water, for the roomal glaze
- 2 g bicarbonate of soda
- 3 g caster sugar
- 10 g white sesame seeds
- 5 g nigella seeds
Equipment
Parchment
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix the bread flour, 350 g water, yeast, salt and oil to a shaggy mass, rest 20 minutes, then stretch and fold in the bowl every 20 minutes until the dough peels off the sides in one smooth sheet. 20 min
- Whisk the 15 g plain flour, 200 g water, bicarbonate of soda and sugar in a small pan and simmer, stirring, to the thickness of single cream; cool it completely.
- Bulk ferment until the dough is domed and doubled, then tip it out and shape one long oval on parchment without knocking the gas from the edges.
- Brush the cooled roomal on thickly, then drag four fingers the length of the loaf to plough deep furrows, and scatter the sesame and nigella into them.
- Bake on a stone at 260C (500F) until the furrow ridges are dark amber and the base sounds hollow, 12 to 14 minutes. 14 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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