Sunday, November 17, 2013

Pataqueta | Traditional Spanish Bread for Baking Partners # 17

Pataqueta is a crescent/moon shaped traditional bread from Valencia, Spain.  It is known since the seventeenth century and was originally consumed by inhabitants of valencia most fertile regions or the orchards or L' Horta when they went to work. These days it is not consumed daily but people prefer to consume the pataquetas -a diminutive form of 'pattaca' during the important festival of 'Fallas' which falls in the month of March every year.

Thanks to Marisa of Thermofan and Swathi of ZestySouthIndianKitchen we all baked pataquetas  for Baking Partners #17. I had tried to stick to the original shape and hope I have achieved it. The bread which is baked with steam has a firm crust, and soft crumb. Its perfect for the month of Thanksgiving and is vegan as well.

Ingredients:

Ferment:

Water: 100 ml / half cup
All Purpose Flour: 1/3 cup
Sugar: 1/2 tsp
Yeast: 1.5 tsp


Bread:

All the ferment

All Purpose Flour: 3 cup
Tepid water: 200 ml / 1 cup
Sea Salt: 1 and 3/4 tsp

Flour: for dusting the countertop/worksurface and bread

Preparation:

Prepare the ferment in a big bowl by adding water first and then sprinkling the yeast. Add the flour and sugar next and mix well. Cover this with a plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge for overnight or uptil 48 hours.

Next day when yu are ready to make the bread, take this out, let it sit in room temperature for sometime and then add the water for the bread followed by flour. The salt is not to be added at this point.

Mix well and turn out the sticky mass that you get onto a dusted/floured worksurface and knead it for another 5 minutes. Then you sprinkle the salt on top of it and knead it again for another 5-10 minutes till you get a smooth and elastic dough.

Divide the dough into 150g pieces and let these rest on the dusted work surface for about 20 minutes or until it  doubles in size.At this point I freezed half of the pieces for later use.

Taking one piece at a time, flatten little with palm and making sure the shape is round, with a sharp knife cut  in from the centre along the radius and cut open towards outside to get a crescent moon shape. 

Transfer to a lined and dusted baking sheet and repeat the process with the rest of the pieces. Cover with a  dusted kitchen towel or plastic wrap and let it rest until doubled for another 1 hour or so. At this point also you can chill them in the fridge for baking the next day or freeze them for future use.

When you are ready for baking, preheat the oven to 200C/ 392F.
Place a tray filled with water when there is just 5-8 minutes remaining for preheat to complete. While preheating, make two cuts along the sides of the pataquetas and sprinkle/dust flour on the top of the bread.

Place the baking sheet in the preheat oven and bake for around 30 minutes. Take out and let it cool for about 5 minutes in hte baking sheet after which transfer to wire rack for cooling completely.



The bread looks very rustic and is crunchy. Its prefect for soaking up gravies and can be consumed as such also or with tea.

Lets see how others baked the pataqueta. Hope on to Baking Partners Challenge # 17


2 Comments:

Thermofan. Marisa G. said...

Hi! Thanks a lot for your post. I love your pataquetas and hope you'll bake them again.
Cheers from Valencia. Have a wonderful week
http://thermofan.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/pataqueta-de-lhorta-valencias-orchard_15.html

Unknown said...

Delicious, you made if perfectly sweatha I love it.

Thanks for visiting my Blog

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