Need help understanding Turkish bread recipes
Hey all, new to this forum but a long term reader and bread making enthusiast. I recently received the just-released Turkish Cookbook (by Musa Dagdeviren) as his episode on Chef's Table made me feel like his book would serve as an authentic and proper source of information on Turkish cooking (and in particular, Turkish bread). However, I need help from more experienced bread-makers as I am having a really hard time understanding his recipes. Not because they are difficult but because they are so "wrong" and really are not resulting in what I would consider good bread. Maybe I have been ruined by Forkish, Reinhart and Hamelman and expect too much. However, I've had authentic Turkish bread many times and the kind of recipes in this book results in creations that are nothing like it.
To give you all an idea the following core recipe is often used in the book:
- 250g whole wheat flour
- 50g fresh yeast
- 175g water
- ...etc
So even before going into the method, this is really strange to me. 100% whole wheat, doesn't, in my opinion, result in the tastiest bread and then the yeast quantity is just astronomical at 20% of flour weight. Some recipes do call for 250g of all-purpose instead but still with the crazy yeast quantity. Then the method is usually something like:
15 minutes bulk fermentation
10 minutes proof
Which obviously is doing very little good in terms of developing flavour and other desirable bread characteristics.
Thus, my question is what am I possibly missing here. As someone with fantastic experiences around high quality authentic Turkish bread, I simply cannot understand what has taken such a weird turn in this book by someone who supposedly is a scholar of authentic Turkish cuisine?
Search this site for several different Turkish loaves of bread. The one that looks nice is:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42857/anatolia%E2%80%A6%E2%80%A6borek-turkish-pide
Here is another good link with a far better yeast quantity, if you go into the search box with turkish bread there are more items to peruse. you are correct that the yeast is way to much @20%
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25707/simit-turkish-sesame-bread
kind regards Derek
from the publishers end. The original may have been 5.0g which would bring it more in line at about 2% for fresh yeast. Converted to instant yeast would give you 1.65g and 0.66%. Either way, it slipped by the proofreader(s).
If he knows what he's doing but his book gives bad results, maybe his publisher ruined his book, or maybe he's a great baker but terrible at writing. There's even a possibility that his name is on a book written by someone else.
Which Turkish breads are you aiming to make?