Clay Oven-baked Bread and Stuff

Making your own bread isn’t actually that difficult. I have a dough that I use for both pizza and garlic bread, and it does the job fine. It’s not the most amazing bread ever, but I do think it’s worth trying to make your own bread. My recipe is quite simple but makes a ton of pizza dough.

Ingredients:

• 500g flour plus more for kneading and rolling out
• one packet of instant dried yeast
• A teaspoon of olive or similar vegetable oil
• One teaspoon of sugar
• 1-3 teaspoons of salt
• Water
• Patience

Instructions:

Throw everything into a large bowl, except for the water and patience. Mix everything together until it’s nicely combined. Then add a tiny bit of water and mash everything together with one hand. Using the other hand, slowly add more water, all the while mixing and kneading the bread. You are looking for a dough that sticks to your hands and comes off easily.

Keep on kneading the dough, and make sure to incorporate all the flour in the bowl. The more you knead, the better the bread, so make sure you knead it for at least 5 minutes.

Put the dough to one side to allow it to rise. Once it’s doubled in size, give it another quick knead and let it rise again. You can now happily bake it into some sort of bready dish. I normally cook pizza or garlic bread at just about 200C, and check on it every five-ten minutes. If you tap on the bread and it sounds weirdly hollow, then your bread is done.

However, this is just my bread. The other day, I went to a restaurant that had a bread-making workshop.

Located in the middle of nowhere, this restaurant was luring people in with their bread, spoon sweets, scented oils and walking-stick-making workshop. There couldn’t have been more than 15 people about, but it still felt fun and warm. I went with family friends, mostly lured in by the idea of making bread. Traditional village bread, not what you’d buy in a shop. Well, actually, I say that, you can get similar bread in shops here in Cyprus, but still, it’s always worth seeing how things are made.

Funnily enough, the ingredients are still somewhat similar. The major ingredient differences are the type of flour used and the amount of dough. The flour is half standard bread flour, the other half is called village flour, which is a bit more coarse. However, we made enough dough between all of us to make a good 40 or more loafs of bread. Seriously, it was soooo much bread. We had a go at kneading the bread, and the men gave the bread a good beating. Turns out, punching bread dough is quite therapeutic.

Another difference is that, instead of adding sugar, they added diluted honey and carob syrup, to better feed the yeast.

The baking of the bread was also very different. I bake my bread in a standard oven. The restaurant’s bread was baked in a massive clay oven with a fire lit underneath, built outside with a heavy metal door keeping all the heat in. Took a while to cook all that bread, but it smelled amazing.

A Hearty Meal

Bread-making was the bigger of the workshop items, but it was a ton of fun. Afterwards, we all mostly went into the restaurant proper, sitting at the large, covered balcony. Everyone ordered food, and we were all also given bread to eat. Freshly baked bread with yogurt and a village salad. Soooo tasty!

Honestly, we had a really nice day, and we all got to experience something new. Everyone involved was cheerful and helpful, the food was great and we also got homemade lemonade, as well as a look into that older, more traditional way of life. Would definitely recommend the place for tourists. If they don’t mind the long drive.