Part 2: Mid-Morning

By mid-morning the kitchen is warm and the oven can come on at last. This part of the day brings breads that rise quickly without yeast, lifted by yogurt, sour milk and raising powders: flatbreads, scones, soda bread, banana bread, cornbread, biscuits, muffins and shortbread, ending with small cheese bread balls from a warm land far to the south.

11. Two Things in a Bowl, and Bread by Ten

Vera: Ayla came in with flour already on her nose. She is standing on the low bench by the oven, where the tiles are warm, holding a pot of thick yogurt in both arms as if it were a sleeping cat, and asking whether this really is all we need.

Anton: Nearly all. Flour that already holds its own raising powder, and thick yogurt. Two things in a bowl, and bread by ten.

Vera: She does not believe you. Neither, quite, do I.

Anton: Then we shall prove it before the clock strikes. In the hot lands far to the south and east, where yogurt sits on every table, cooks have mixed it into flour for a very long time. Its sourness wakes up the raising powder, and the bread lifts in the pan.

At the Work Table

For 6 flatbreads: 190 g self-raising flour (1 1/2 cups) and a little more for dusting, 250 g thick plain yogurt (1 cup) and a pinch of salt. Without self-raising flour, use 190 g plain flour with 2 teaspoons baking powder.

Anton: A child mixes the flour, salt and yogurt in a bowl with a spoon, then with one hand, until a soft, slightly sticky ball forms. If the yogurt is runny, hold back a spoonful.

Anton: The child kneads it on a floured table for one minute only, until it is smooth. Longer makes it tough.

Anton: A child divides the dough into 6 pieces and pats or rolls each into a round about 15 cm across and as thick as a coin stacked on a coin.

Anton: A grown-up heats a heavy frying pan over medium heat, handle turned in, and wipes it with a little oil.

Anton: The grown-up cooks each flatbread for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until it puffs, shows golden patches and sounds dry when tapped. Tear the first one open to check that no wet dough is left inside.

Vera: Brush them with melted butter while they are warm, and a drizzle of honey for the children, though never for a baby under one. They are best warm. Wrap any leftovers and warm them in the dry pan the day after.

Anton: Or make them savoury, with melted butter, a crushed clove of garlic and chopped parsley, the way they are torn and dipped into soup in the south.

The Dairy at the End of the Lane, Long Ago

Vera: The summer I was twenty, I worked for Bettina, who kept the dairy at the end of our lane. She had a cool stone counter, a brass churn that shone like the moon, and rows of yogurt pots covered with muslin against the flies.

Vera: On Fridays she mixed the week's last yogurt with flour and cooked flatbreads on the stove for the milk-cart drivers. They ate them standing in the yard, still too hot to hold, passing them from hand to hand like coals. Nothing was ever wasted in that dairy.

Anton: The best kitchens waste nothing. They only change things into other things.

On the Warm Tiles by the Oven

Question: Ayla asks how bread can rise when there is no yeast in it at all.

Answer: Self-raising flour has baking powder already mixed into it. When the sour yogurt wets it, tiny bubbles of gas form and swell in the heat, like air bubbles rising through a pond.

Three quick questions. One: What two things make this bread? Two: How long is the dough kneaded? Three: How can you tell a flatbread is cooked through?

Answers. One: Self-raising flour and thick yogurt. Two: One minute. Three: It sounds dry when tapped, and no wet dough shows inside.

Ten O'Clock, the Kettle On

Vera: Look. It is not yet ten, and there are six breads on the plate. I have baked with children for years, and I always believed that bread meant a long wait.

Anton: Some bread does. Bread with yeast asks for patience, the way a garden does. This kind is only a bowl, a pan and a quarter of an hour, and a child who sees it finished before her attention wanders.

Vera: Then the kettle goes on. Warm water with a squeeze of lemon and a spoon of honey suits them well, as long as it is cool enough to sip. Ayla can stir the honey in, slowly, like a bee going round a flower.

12. Hot Water, Oil and a Coil

Vera: A letter came for us this week. It is from Elif, who writes at her kitchen table above a laundry, where, she says, the windows steam up every morning. I shall read it out.

Vera: "My children love the flaky spring onion pancakes from the stall near their school. When I make them at home, they come out tough and flat, with no layers at all. What am I doing wrong?"

Anton: A good question, and a common one. Nothing she is doing is wrong, exactly. She is simply missing three small things: hot water, oil and a coil.

The Morning Post

Vera: Hot water in a dough? Everything you have taught me so far used warm water, or cold.

Anton: This one is different. Boiling water half cooks the flour as it mixes, so the dough comes out soft and lazy. It rolls very thin and does not spring back. Cold water makes a dough that fights the rolling pin like a young dog on a lead.

Vera: And the coil?

Anton: That is where the layers come from. You spread oil on a thin sheet, roll it up, wind it into a snail and roll it flat again. The oil keeps every layer apart, like leaves pressed in a heavy book.

Vera: Dagny has been listening from the rocking chair beside the radiator, with the cat asleep on her knees. She wants to know whether one pancake can really have a hundred layers.

Anton: Not a hundred. Perhaps twenty, if she rolls thinly. Enough to count with a fingernail.

A Lantern Under the Plane Tree, Long Ago

Anton: I learned this from Hao, in a great river delta far to the east. His cart stood every evening under a lantern strung from a plane tree, beside a barrel of spring onions as tall as my knee.

Anton: He never used a rolling pin for the last step. He slapped each snail flat with the heel of his hand, one blow, and laid it in the oil. Then he shook the cooked pancake with two spatulas until it burst open into layers, like a pine cone opening in the sun.

Vera: Could you do it with one blow?

Anton: Never. I still use the rolling pin.

At the Work Table

For 4 pancakes, each about 18 cm across (24 wedges): 250 g plain flour (2 cups), 150 ml just-boiled water (2/3 cup), 2 to 3 tablespoons cold water, 1 teaspoon salt, 4 spring onions, and about 8 tablespoons oil, half for brushing and half for frying.

Anton: A grown-up pours the just-boiled water into the flour while stirring with a fork. Steam rises, so children stand back. Stir in the cold water.

Anton: When the dough is cool enough to touch, a child kneads it for 5 minutes until smooth. Cover it and leave it for 30 minutes.

Anton: A grown-up slices the spring onions finely, or an older child snips them with kitchen scissors while a grown-up watches.

Anton: A child divides the dough into 4 and rolls each piece very thin, about 25 cm across, then brushes it with oil and scatters a quarter of the salt and onions over it.

Anton: The child rolls it up like a carpet into a rope, winds the rope into a snail, tucks the end underneath and leaves it for 10 minutes.

Anton: The child rolls each snail flat again, about 18 cm across.

Anton: A grown-up heats 1 tablespoon of oil per pancake in a frying pan over medium heat, handle turned in, and fries each one for about 3 minutes a side, until golden and crisp. The oil spits, so children stay back. Cut into wedges and eat them hot, while they still crunch.

The Window Seat, Late Morning

Question: Dagny asks why the snail has to rest before it is rolled flat.

Answer: Winding the rope tightens the dough. Ten minutes of rest lets it relax, so the layers flatten without tearing.

Three quick questions. One: What kind of water goes into this dough? Two: What keeps the layers apart? Three: How long does each side fry?

Answers. One: Just-boiled water. Two: The oil brushed between them. Three: About 3 minutes.

Vera: I shall write back to Elif today. Hot water, oil and a coil, and patience between each.

Anton: And tell her the first one will be a lump. It always is, and it tastes just as good.

Key Words

Hot-water dough: a dough mixed with just-boiled water, which makes it soft, tender and easy to roll very thin.

Coiling: winding a long rope of dough round and round into a flat spiral, like a snail's shell, to build layers.

Flaky: made of many thin layers that pull apart easily when you tear the bread.