The Easiest Bread To Make Might Surprise You - Exclusive
Making your own bread might not be rocket science, exactly — but, there are many ways you can mess it up. From over-proofing the dough to not using enough salt to forgetting the importance of a little fat, opportunities to get egg on your face abound. Does that mean you have to settle for store-bought? Nope. We know this because we, indeed, spoke with a professional baker, who informed us that there is one type of beginner-level bread that really anyone with a pan and some flour can make.
Which bread might that be? In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Erez Komarovsky, founder of Israeli bakery chain Lehem Erez, revealed that pita bread, the popular accompaniment to Middle Eastern foods like hummus and falafel, deserves this honor. "It's easy. It's the easiest bread to bake, really!" Maybe you're thinking that pita bread is a flatbread requiring hydration, and many of us stumble about how much water to use. But according to Komarovsky, hydration won't make or break your pita, and you don't even need special equipment. "I think it's very important to understand that it's easy to bake," he added. "You don't need a huge wood-fired oven. If you don't have everything, if you live in New York and you don't have it, okay — you can do it in a regular skillet, and it's nice!" Komarovsky is teaching how to make pita and other Israeli foods in his YesChef online cooking course.
Why you should become "obsessive" about baking, according to Erez Komarovsky
But let's take a step back. If you're in a panic about messing up bread, it's time to relax, Komarovsky advised. The award-winning chef, who has worked alongside the likes of Wolfgang Puck, said that you need to lighten up if you want to perfect your cooking craft. "Be free to do whatever you want and feel free to do whatever you want," Komarovsky said. "Don't follow recipes like they are the Bible. Just feel free and be happy in the kitchen."
Komarovsky added one additional, and somewhat mysterious, piece of advice: "Don't take no for an answer from anything and from any ingredient." Take no ... from what, a potato? How exactly does that work? Komarovsky clarified: "If you don't succeed the first time, try a second time, try a third time." Practice does make perfect, for pita bread and any other food, for that matter, according to Komarovsky. "I'm baking for 30 years now, and it's obvious that in the beginning, I didn't succeed to make good bread, but it... didn't paralyze me. It just energized me. I wanted to do better," he recalled, so, "I tried again and again and again and again. Be obsessive about it."
If you're interested in learning Israeli cooking, you'll definitely want to check out Chef Erez Komarovsky's class on the roots of Middle Eastern cuisine over at YesChef.