Recently, I went for Umrah with my family. It always is an amazing spiritual journey. Our first stop was Madina. While walking to the mosque from our hotel, we would see different kinds of shops, most of which are restaurants and baqalas (sort of small supermarkets or general stores). While the eateries mostly cater to an international taste as Muslims from all over the world come to visit this city, it is the baqalas where you can find a few of the traditional breads.
My favorite one was a ring shaped bread, covered with sesame seeds and filled with cottage or ricotta cheese. It was awesome. The moment it was taken out of the shopping bag, the whole room will fill with the aroma of baked bread and sesame seeds. The taste was really good, and there is no wonder when I wanted to recreate the bread at home; to enjoy the bread and to reminisce the 4 days spent at Madina.
A quick search lead me to this recipe. The downside was it did not cater for the filling. So I set about to use this recipe and experiment with the filling. I did not use the whole recipe for the first time. I used two-thirds of it and made two breads. As a result my bread was slightly bigger than it should have been. I also used my own soft cottage cheese recipe. It is a handy recipe to quickly make cheese , which I have used in other recipes as well (check out Greek Tomato Pie , Tomato Bread ).
Recipe
Ingredients
3 to 31/2 cup flour
3 eggs
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp instant yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
Filling:
2 recipes Soft Cottage Cheese
Chopped green coriander , as required
Topping:
1 egg , beaten
1 tsp vinegar (optional)
Sesame seeds, as required
Method
Combine flour , milk powder , yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl (if you do not have instant yeast, you will need to proof it first in warm water with sugar and then add to the flour). Add eggs and vinegar. Rub the eggs in flour. Knead flour with warm water until the dough is smooth and elastic. The dough might feel slightly sticky, but it is alright. Place the dough in a lightly oiled large bowl, and keep covered in a warm place until it is doubled in size.
Knock down the dough and divide into four parts. Roll out the dough into a rectangle, around 1/8 inch thick. Spread some cottage cheese along one of the long edges of the rolled out dough. Sprinkle some green coriander (you can mix in green coriander with cottage before filling it in the bread). Start rolling the bread dough from the long edge where cottage cheese is placed until a log is formed. Join the ends of the log to form a ring.
Brush the ring with egg (add vinegar to egg if you want to avoid the egg smell). Sprinkle sesame seeds on the bread. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and let rest for around 10 minutes.
Meanwhile preheat the oven to 270C or as high as your oven goes. Place the bread in oven and bake for 5-7 minutes at 270C. Then reduce temperature to 200C and bake for 7-10 minutes. I would check the bread at 5 minutes after reducing the heat so as not to over cook the bread. Use the broiler / grill if the bread doesn’t brown from the top. Remove bread from oven. Serve warm.
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