Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [175]
Chapter 15
Breads, Sandwiches, Cakes & Cookies
All baked goods are a mixture of flour and water. When moistened, protein in flour forms an elastic web of gluten. The higher the protein content and the more mixing that is done, the thicker the gluten becomes. That’s why recipes for chewy breads call for high-protein bread flour and long periods of kneading. Cakes and quick breads benefit from low protein high-starch cake flour and a minimum of mixing after the flour is added.
Many grilled flatbreads are little more than these two ingredients (plus a little salt). The earliest breads were baked directly over or in a fire, which means that baking on a grill takes us back to the roots of baking. Chapati are whole grain flat-breads that cook in seconds, emerging from the flames soft and pliable, slightly chewy, and bubbled and blistered, with flecks of charred dough. They are best eaten right off the grill. Allow them to cool, and they will become brittle and cardboard-y. In order to make bread last, its texture has to be leavened.
About Breads and Grill-Baking
Leavening agents lighten dough. The most basic leavener is air. Air bubbles get trapped in the web of gluten whenever dough is beaten or kneaded. When heated, the air expands and the baked good rises. In addition, as a dough or batter cooks, water is converted into steam, which fills the air bubbles, stretching the gluten even more. The expansion is intensified by adding yeast or chemical leaveners, like baking powder and baking soda, which produce carbon dioxide gas. The gas increases the volume of bubbles. Leaveners don’t produce more bubbles, they just make existing bubbles larger, so it is vital to incorporate air into a batter or dough by beating it, kneading it, or adding an aerated substance such as firmly beaten egg whites.
Pita, pizza, focaccia, naan, lavash, and even pretzels are examples of simple leavened flatbreads that bake well on a grill. The thinner the bread, the higher and more direct the heat can be. Lavash, the paper-thin sheet bread of the Caucasus, bakes over a direct high flame for about 30 seconds per side. Medium-thick breads like pizza and naan bake over medium-high flames, while thicker breads like focaccia and pretzels can be grill-baked either over direct low heat or indirect high heat. Because all of the heat for grill-baking radiates from below, you cannot effectively bake fully risen loaf-type breads on a grill. They require even heat radiating from all directions, like the heat distribution in a closed oven.
Adding fat like oil, butter, or rendered bacon drippings makes dough tender. Baked goods made with more fat, such as cakes, biscuits, cookies, pastries, and shortbreads, are softer or flakier than low-fat, yeast-risen flatbreads. Fat keeps water from hydrating the flour proteins that form gluten. Therefore the gluten strands are shorter (hence the term “shortening”) and less elastic.
The higher the proportion of fat, the more pronounced its effects will be. Solid saturated fats, such as vegetable shortening and lard, are 100 percent fat, and they make a more tender and flakier piecrust than butter or margarine, which are only about 80 percent fat. Solid fats hold more air bubbles, making them better for aerated cakes. And, since we depend on fat to transport aromatic components into our olfactory sensors, the addition of fat increases all of the flavors in a baked good. Small pastries like shortbreads and pastry straws, and thin pastries like tarts and quiches, bake on a grill beautifully. Like breads, large or tall pastries have problems baking evenly over a fire, and are not the best choices for grill-baking. Sugar added to dough doesn’t just make it sweet. Sugar makes baked goods tender, moist, and crisp, and gives them a rich brown color. Remove sugar from a cake or cookie recipe, and the results will be dense, dry, and pale. Add extra sugar, and the baked good will become crisper and browner.
Very sweet cakes and cookies tend to burn on the grill. For that reason the recipes