Directions: |
Directions:Combine flour, yeast and salt in the bowl of a food processor. (sorry, i'm not experienced enough to tell you what to do if you don't have one.) Process dough for two minutes.
Remove dough and knead on the counter (flour on surface) to distribute heat. Process the dough for one minute more, knead again. Do this three or so times until the dough is very smooth and strong.
Franni and I knead the dough for about 15 minutes by hand. We hold it up high and slap it down onto our counter top - mush it over, pick it up and smack it down again, hard. You can tell it's ready when you rip off a small piece, stretch it, hold it up to the light and you can see the light go through it, but with no holes. If it rips apart, keep kneading it. Be patient, it takes a while!
Place the dough in a large bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let the dough ferment until it has doubled in bulk, about two hours.
Grind the chunks of onion in a food processor into a puree. Then heap the onion onto a small mount on a cookie sheet. Bake it in a 350º oven until light brown, about an hour, stirring it once or twice. The onion should be moist, let it cool. Ours has looked purple before - maybe some of you know why, not me.
Cut the dough into 12 pieces. Round the pieces into smooth balls, cover them with plastic wrap and let them proof until puffy and very light and deflate lightly when pressed, about two and a half hours.
45 minutes before the breads are fully proofed, position your oven rack to the second to top position and place a baking stone on it. We don't have one so we use a cookie sheet. Preheat oven to 475º. Stretch each dough round out to look like a pizza, 5 to 6" in diameter. Lightly pull out so the center is thinner (like a bialy...). Arrange six shaped rounds on a piece of parchment. Smear about 1/4 to 1/2 t of the onion puree into the center of each round, just a tiny bit to give a bit of flavor. Slide the parchment onto the cookie sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes, rotating halfway around to even baking. Transfer to a rack and cook the next batch. |
This recipe for Bialys is from