Grilling at the beach
I've promised to bring some dough to a beach barbecue so that I can pat it out and we can have fresh flatbread. (Yes, it's kinda cold here in Honolulu, but 65 degrees in the evening IS cold for us.) I will start some sourdough today so it can be ready for tomorrow evening. I am wondering what hydration would be best. Not anything too wet. I do not want it oozing through my hands. I am thinking 60% Yes? No?
Also would appreciate tips on patting out dough. I looked up flatbreads and naan online. The instructions seem to assume that you are in a kitchen with a counter and a rolling pin. I am guessing that one trick might be to work with smallish balls of dough so that the patted out dough will just cover my hand with fingers outspead. Golf ball size?
like a platter or a cookie sheet where you can get it roughed into a round, then you can pick it up and finish it out the same way you would with pizza dough.
You can search YouTube for videos of this technique. Peter Reinhart has a pizza-shaping video that is easy to understand.
Not counting the baby. So I am planning multiple flatbreads, like naans.
for camping bread, or campfire bread.
there are a multitude of ways to bake bread at the beach. One may include each baking their own on a stick turning the dough like a marshmallow until baked. That may include stripes of dough wrapped spiraling around the stick or just a blob pressed around the end. For a wrap-on-stick, I would go for a low hydration yeasted bread for a faster oven rise over the fire. One can still use sourdough (discards, frozen, or dried sourdough) to flavour the dough but the working window will be greater and withstand multiple rises. Less apt to overferment the dough.
Also check out the blog. Palwithnooven
Matthew has a little cart that carries grill and gas canister to the beach. He usually does BBQ chicken. This time I am bringing pork tenderloin (to turn into char siu) and dough. If the flatbreads do not work out, the seagulls will have a feast.
Char siu was fantastic, but the naan was meh. I would have done better to just bake up that dough as a loaf and hand around slices of bread.
We also had tuna steak, green salad, green beans, and fruit salad. Beer. Chips. Friday night Waikiki fireworks. Baby Artie was cute as anything. Amazing how much fun he has chewing on his stuffed rabbit and waving a spoon. That is how some Buddhists party!