Kubaneh (Yemenite Pull-Apart Bread)
Kubaneh (Arabic: كبانة ; Hebrew: כֻּבַּאנֶה), is a leavened bread baked in a greased pot with a tightly-sealed lid, where it cooks in its own vapors. Traditionally eaten by the Jews of Yemen on Sabbath days and holidays, the pot is usually placed in an oven (formerly a clay oven where it was laid
Ingredients
- 1 tsp salt
- 2½–3 cups lukewarm water (or enough for kneading dough)
- 1 tsp dried yeast
- 3 tsp white granulated sugar
- 3 cups white, all-purpose wheat flour (optional: try using some sorghum flour)
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil or other fat
- 1 tsp black cumin (Nigella sativa; optional)
Instructions
- Dissolve salt in lukewarm water.
- Sprinkle yeast over lukewarm water and add sugar. Leave for 10 minutes until yeast is foamy.
- Add yeast mixture to flour, and knead to form a dough.
- After kneading the dough, allow it to sit 10 minutes until it begins to rise.
- Repeat process: turn it and knead it again and let sit 10 minutes until it rises. Repeat this process 3 or 4 times until dough rises to the top of the kneading bowl and one is left with a uniform texture and consistency.
- Grease the baking pot with the vegetable oil.
- Divide dough into smaller pieces (8–10 round pieces).
- Place all dough pieces in pot, one after the other; compacted together. Fill to one-third the capacity of baking pot and cover tightly with lid.
- Preheat oven to 225–280°F (107–138°C). Bake bread for 1 hour at the higher temperature or 3 hours at the lower temperature. It should be golden brown.
- Turn bread out onto a plate, turn bread upside down, and restore to baking pot.
- Cover pot with lid and bake another hour; or reduce oven temperature to and bake overnight. If desired, remove from oven and afterwards return it only close to the Sabbath.
- Serve hot with clarified butter, usually also with tomato salsa mixed with chopped coriander.