Pataqueta. Valencia’ Orchard Traditional Bread~ Baking Partners challenge

Pataqueta. Valencia’ Orchard traditional Bread 

This months Baking partners challenge is a very traditional yeast bread. Since Thanks giving is coming up  Swathi suggested yet another bread. I am so excited for this months challenge and my heartfelt thanks to Marisa (Thermofan) for suggesting this beautiful traditional Spanish bread. All of us get nostalgic when it comes to special recipes passed down through generations. I really appreciate Marisa's effort to trace an authentic recipe, took time to discuss with a local baker for the exact technique of making this bread and also sharing the tradition of her country with the group. She sent us a detailed step by step instruction with pictures which proved a helpful guide. Marisa say's that this bread is from Valencia, known at least since the Seventeenth Century. The Pataqueta, as the name suggests is shaped like a crescent Moon.This is the bread the inhabitants of the Valencia’s Orchard used to eat when they went to work. It was firstly baked in the Moorish oven they have in their Barraca and then in wood stoves. Pataquetas are usually baked for their important festival “Fallas” every year in March. This bread has a soft crumb, a firm crust and its taste is the taste of ancient bread. It is fat free it is best when served with warm soup or slice to make a sandwich. It makes a comforting and filling meal. Try this you will surely love it.

 The recipe is adapted from here “Entre cacerolas”. 

Ingredients
To make the starter
Water- 100ml
 All purpose flour or white flour-50 grams/ 1/2 cup
Instant yeast- 6.25g
(or active dry yeast- 2 tsp or fresh yeast- 12.5g)
Sugar -1/2 tsp

Bread dough

Strong bread flour or all purpose flour-450g/ 3cups
Tepid water-200 ml
Salt- 1 3/4 tsp
All the ferment
and flour for dusting the work surface

Directions

Ferment

Stir the yeast into the water in your mixing bowl, then add the flour and sugar and mix well. Cover with plastic film.Put into the fridge overnight or up to 48 hours. 

Bread dough

Add all the ingredients except salt in a bowl. Pour in the ferment too and mix together with your scraper. When everything comes together into a ball, dust your work surface with flour and put this dough on the work surface. Start kneading the dough. Knead the dough using a stretch and fold method(pushing the dough away from you and then folding it back towards you). Work the dough for about 10 minutes, then add the salt and continue kneading until smooth and elastic.

Divide dough into 150 g pieces and then form the dough into small smooth balls, cover with a baking cloth and leave to rest for 20 minutes or until them double in size.Flatten with the palm of the hand, putting more pressure on the edges of the dough to get a rounded shape.Then with a sharp knife or baker scraper make a cut in half way through the circle and cut open and push to slightly on both sides to form a crescent .Place them on a baking tray and cover them again with a kitchen cloth dusted with flour. Leave to rest until them double in size, for about 1 hour. Make two cuts on the bottom of the crescent before baking.Sprinkle a little fine flour using a sieve or strainer

Preheat the oven to 200º C / 392 F. In a shallow baking dish pour hot water and place it in the lowest rack of the oven and allow this to heat up.Bake with steam, 30 minutes at 200 °C / 392 F.Cool on a wire rack before slicing the bread.

Tips:

Following Richard Bertinet advices, it is preferable to introduce the ferment in the fridge than leaving it at room temperature: “the slower the maturation the better developed the flavor and characteristic crumb and crust of the bread”.
The amount of flour can vary depending on the type of flour that we use. The dough should not be soft.

Try this
Hope you will all enjoy!