I saw this video on FB last week. A baker from Turkey demonstrated making these small, round, enriched bread loaves. The method was so simple and the final product so beautiful I couldn’t resist trying my hand.

The video was in the baker’s language, but it was captioned either with automatically created captions (I hope) or by someone who was very obviously neither a baker or a native English speaker. In honesty, the computer’s, or human translator’s, mastery of English is far better than my translation to any language other than igpay -atinlay.

Luckily, and oddly, the recipe ingredients were listed below the video. Oddly in that they were listed in US and Metric units. The method was pretty standard and required little adjustment. I made a few modifications to the original recipe. I mixed and kneaded the down in my stand mixer, rather than my hand. I divided the dough into 7 pieces of 150g each. Next time, I will make each 175g and make 6 loaves as reflected below. This batch of loaves were 5” diameter and 2/5” high. I would like them a little bigger, maybe 6×3”.

The cutting board in this photo was made by my father, or me, I cannot remember, but it is still our day to day cutting board ‘lo these 40+ years.

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Enriched Bread – Small Round Loaves

INGREDIENTS
• 200 ml warm milk
• 200 ml warm water
• 10 g (1 Tbl) sugar
• 10g (1 Tbl) instant yeast
• 30 g (2 Tbl) melted butter
• 600g (5 cups) flour
• 8 g (1 tsp) salt
• 25g butter cut in strips to lay on cut rolls before baking

METHOD

1. Add milk, water, sugar and yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer and mix until combined
2. Add 300 g flour,butter, salt and mix
3. Add remaining 300 g of flour and knead until a smooth dough forms, about 8 minutes.
4. Form the dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl. (I spray olive oil into the stand mixer bowl.)
5. Cover and let rise for 45 min
6. Gently deflate the dough and divide into six 175g pieces
7. Roll each piece into a ball, tensioning the surface by rolling with a cupped hand on a clean surface. Each ball should be approx 3” diameter
8. Pat each ball down to flatten and place, well spaced, on a parchment paper lined baking tray. Oven spring will double the size of the loaves
9. Cover and let rise for 15 – 20 minutes until it passes the poke test
10. Dust lightly with four, cut a deep slash all the way across the ball with a lame or razor blade or very sharp knife.
11. Lay a strip of butter, about 0.5”x0.5”x3” long in each slash. (Cut a stick of butter lengthwise into ninths.
12. Bake in a preheated over at 400F for 25 min.