Ack! Another Roll Out Pancake! - Armenia
So this next post brings me to the country of Armenia. For this country, I set to research what an Armenian Pancake might be. I must say, I am getting really good at finding them now. No more hours and hours of searching before I find something that might even be a clue to what they could be.
When I concluded his research, I discovered that there are a couple of types of Armenian pancakes. I decided to try the one called bishi. Much to my dismay, this involved rolling the pancake dough out into a circle. Ack! Although I was somewhat successful with the last pancake recipe that required this, I still have my moments where I lack confidence when it comes to rolling out dough. I hoped and hoped that this one wouldn't give me any problems.
We must give thanks to a blogger right here on Blogger. I discovered the recipe I used on the blog The Armenian Kitchen.com . There were some other recipes on the site that looked really tasty as well, so check them out if you have a chance and are looking for some Armenian eats.
Here are the ingredients you will need to make Armenian Pancakes:
1 egg, beaten
1 ½ Tbsp melted butter, cooled to lukewarm
½ cup water
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp baking powder
clarified butter
sugar
You can make the clarified butter yourself if you'd like, but it does take some time to do this. I won't go into details on how to make clarified butter, as you can go to The Armenian Kitchen.com, and Robyn has very clear instructions on how to do this. I chose to buy clarified butter instead. The grocery store nearby didn't have any, but I found some at Bristol Farms. I'm sure a store like Whole Foods would have some as well. If you can't find it at either of these places (or you don't have one nearby), you can also find it at a local Indian food grocery store, where it is sold under the name of ghee.
The first thing you want to do is melt the butter (Not the clarified butter, but just regular butter. We used regular salted butter). Make sure to allow it to cool to almost room temperature. If it is too hot, it will cook the egg when you put them in. While the butter is cooling, beat the egg in a separate bowl. Sorry, I didn't take a picture of the beaten eggs, but you probably know what they look like already anyway.
I found that my butter still hadn't cooled enough, so I moved on to sifting the dry ingredients together. Normally I just put all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together to sift them because I hate having to deal with a sifter and cleaning it afterward. While the butter is still cooling, sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl that does not have the egg or melted butter in it.
Your butter should be cool enough now, so add it to the beaten egg, stirring the egg with a fork constantly as you add the butter. Doing this will help prevent the butter from cooking the egg as you add it. After all, you don't want little bits of cooked egg inside your pancake.
Once you've beaten the egg and butter together, you can now start adding the dry ingredients. I added them slowly and used a wooden spoon to mix until everything started to come together into a solid clump.
After it all started coming together into a solid clump, I switched to kneading the dough with my hand until it was no longer sticky.
Next pinch off 1 1/4 inch diameter balls of the dough.
Now it's time for my least favorite part - rolling the dough out. Roll each ball of dough into a circle. After I finished rolling them out, mine were about 1/8 inch in thickness.
As you can see, I seem to be getting better at this whole rolling dough out thing!
Melt some clarified butter in a heavy bottomed skillet. Fry the rolled out dough in the melted butter until it is golden brown.
As always, you can keep these warm on a plate under a clean dish towel or in a warm oven. As you can see from the above photo, this recipe made about 8 pancakes. I sprinkled some granulated sugar over them and ate them with scrambled eggs.
While these were tasty, they were a bit chewier than I expected. It could have been that I overworked the dough a bit, or it could just be that they are supposed to be chewy. Whichever it was, they were delightful to eat.
When I concluded his research, I discovered that there are a couple of types of Armenian pancakes. I decided to try the one called bishi. Much to my dismay, this involved rolling the pancake dough out into a circle. Ack! Although I was somewhat successful with the last pancake recipe that required this, I still have my moments where I lack confidence when it comes to rolling out dough. I hoped and hoped that this one wouldn't give me any problems.
We must give thanks to a blogger right here on Blogger. I discovered the recipe I used on the blog The Armenian Kitchen.com . There were some other recipes on the site that looked really tasty as well, so check them out if you have a chance and are looking for some Armenian eats.
Here are the ingredients you will need to make Armenian Pancakes:
1 egg, beaten
1 ½ Tbsp melted butter, cooled to lukewarm
½ cup water
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp baking powder
clarified butter
sugar
You can make the clarified butter yourself if you'd like, but it does take some time to do this. I won't go into details on how to make clarified butter, as you can go to The Armenian Kitchen.com, and Robyn has very clear instructions on how to do this. I chose to buy clarified butter instead. The grocery store nearby didn't have any, but I found some at Bristol Farms. I'm sure a store like Whole Foods would have some as well. If you can't find it at either of these places (or you don't have one nearby), you can also find it at a local Indian food grocery store, where it is sold under the name of ghee.
The first thing you want to do is melt the butter (Not the clarified butter, but just regular butter. We used regular salted butter). Make sure to allow it to cool to almost room temperature. If it is too hot, it will cook the egg when you put them in. While the butter is cooling, beat the egg in a separate bowl. Sorry, I didn't take a picture of the beaten eggs, but you probably know what they look like already anyway.
I found that my butter still hadn't cooled enough, so I moved on to sifting the dry ingredients together. Normally I just put all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together to sift them because I hate having to deal with a sifter and cleaning it afterward. While the butter is still cooling, sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl that does not have the egg or melted butter in it.
Your butter should be cool enough now, so add it to the beaten egg, stirring the egg with a fork constantly as you add the butter. Doing this will help prevent the butter from cooking the egg as you add it. After all, you don't want little bits of cooked egg inside your pancake.
Once you've beaten the egg and butter together, you can now start adding the dry ingredients. I added them slowly and used a wooden spoon to mix until everything started to come together into a solid clump.
After it all started coming together into a solid clump, I switched to kneading the dough with my hand until it was no longer sticky.
Next pinch off 1 1/4 inch diameter balls of the dough.
Now it's time for my least favorite part - rolling the dough out. Roll each ball of dough into a circle. After I finished rolling them out, mine were about 1/8 inch in thickness.
As you can see, I seem to be getting better at this whole rolling dough out thing!
Melt some clarified butter in a heavy bottomed skillet. Fry the rolled out dough in the melted butter until it is golden brown.
As always, you can keep these warm on a plate under a clean dish towel or in a warm oven. As you can see from the above photo, this recipe made about 8 pancakes. I sprinkled some granulated sugar over them and ate them with scrambled eggs.
While these were tasty, they were a bit chewier than I expected. It could have been that I overworked the dough a bit, or it could just be that they are supposed to be chewy. Whichever it was, they were delightful to eat.
The texture of this should be flaky like a croissant or pie crust not chewy like bread. It is served with simple syrup or honey for breakfast. Does anyone know how to get the dough that way? I have been searching this recipe for years!
ReplyDeleteWell, I know that to get a texture like a croissant or pie crust you need lots more butter than what this recipe calls for. Also, you wouldn't melt the butter. Instead you would roll it at room temperature into the dough, and you would keep laying dough and butter, folding, and rolling it to get the butter flaky texture.
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