It’s easy, though, to feel disconnected from the little jar of red powder sitting in our spice cabinet when we pick it up at a big-box store. All too often it’s filled with flat-tasting dust from nondescript peppers. It’s there; it’s vaguely reddish; it’s been there to flavor many a pot of chili. But a good chili powder, thoughtfully sourced and artfully blended, is a complex work of art.

Our Turkey Urfa Chili gets its smoky, spicy flavor from Urfa biber, a dried Turkish chili pepper from the Urfa region of Turkey. It’s truly something to behold: a deep burgundy, almost black, with a surprising, unique flavor that strikes a perfect balance between smoky, salty and sweet. It begins with the Isot pepper, a bright red chili that looks a bit like an elongated red bell pepper. After harvest, the pepper is partially dried in the sun, then left under tarps to oxidize and ferment. 

Just picture it: rolling hills blanketed with bright white tarps and deep red chilies drying in the low autumn sun. We could wax poetic about this spice all day. We get ours from our friends at Épices de Cru, and we’re smitten with its fruity, chocolatey heat. It’s similar to Aleppo pepper in many ways, with raisin-like notes that start singing upon first sniff.

Maybe we’re biased, but one of our favorite ways to enjoy Urfa biber is in a big, steaming bowl of our Turkey Urfa Chili. We make it with a heaping scoop of those purpley-red chili flakes, plus some green chile powder to add some complexity. We serve it up in our Bakeshop every Thursday, and it’s a guest favorite for good reason. But if you find yourself craving it on any other day of the week, you’re in luck, because we’re sharing the recipe with you! Take one bite of that Urfa-perfumed chili, and you’ll be transported to the hills of Turkey.

Turkey Urfa Chili

1. In a large stockpot, heat the oil and sauté the onions over medium to low heat until they are translucent. Add the ground turkey and minced garlic. Stir frequently and actively break up the turkey to avoid clumping. Cook the turkey completely. Add the cumin, green chile powder, Urfa pepper, salt, and pepper. Stir to incorporate the spices and cook over low heat for 2 minutes.

2. Add the beans and both kinds of tomatoes. Mix well. Bring to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Stir frequently to avoid scorching. Serve hot in bowls with sour cream and chopped green onions as tasty garnishes.

By Emily Hanka, Bakehouse Marketing Manager

Recipe from Zingerman’s Bakehouse by Amy Emberling & Frank Carollo, Chronicle Books (October 3, 2017)

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Those who’ve tried it know what craveable secrets the humble slice holds. A bounty of fruity Castelvetrano olives crown a crisp-crusted, chewy, bubbly slice of deeply colored whole grain focaccia. A single bite unlocks innumerable layers of flavor. Warm, twangy raw and roasted garlic! Bright, poppy lemon! Fruity, herbaceous coriander! It’s a celebration of simple ingredients inspired by Hazim’s upbringing on the island of Cyprus. 

Intrigued by the story behind my new favorite midday snack, I sat down to talk with him about how this savory treat came to be.

Can you tell me a bit about the process of coming up with this focaccia? It’s really such a unique bread.

We went to the Grain Gathering at Washington State University last year and tasted lots of wonderful stuff, and one thing that stuck out was this whole grain focaccia. It was more like a flatbread, not quite focaccia—it’s kind of a blurry term—but it tasted great. I’d tasted things kind of like that before, but it was a good reminder. Here, we’re always talking about what new breads to work on, and when we came back, Amy (Bakehouse managing partner) said, “I think I want a whole grain focaccia.”

I love working with naturally leavened doughs and freshly milled grain, so this was just perfect. I also tried to base it on what we had in-hand. Hard red spring wheat is strong and very flavorful, and spelt is also very flavorful. It’s an ancient grain, but it also has this extensibility that you don’t get with the hard red spring, meaning it’s great for stretching a dough into a flatbread.

I had the formula in my head: a wet dough that gets fermented overnight with a very little bit of starter in it as the jumping-off point. A bit of olive oil, because that’s what focaccia is typically associated with. But the other part of the equation was the sheet pan, which is what we typically bake our focaccias in. I’d tried that once, but I knew these breads would require a lot of heat and our sheet pans don’t necessarily work that way. 

Normally, when you bake in a wood-fired oven, you can use sheet pans to cool down the stone hearth. If you imagine putting something in a sheet pan and then putting it on the deck ovens, it’s not going to get as much heat as if you put it directly on the hearth. I tried that and it didn’t really work. I needed really high heat, not the heat that we have going on in these deck ovens. I’d use my little Rofco oven in Cyprus, and when I was making pizzas, I’d just crank it all the way up to 300°C. As I was thinking about that, it just immediately clicked that I should use Detroit-style pizza pans—they have higher sides than a sheet pan, plus they’re made out of cast-iron so they retain heat more efficiently. So you plop the dough in there, let it relax, stretch it out, proof until it gets super bubbly and light. That’s what I really like—you can really push the proof, so the flavors explode and the texture becomes super-tender. The more you ferment, the softer and more tender it gets. Then, when you bake it in a super-hot oven, they’re ready in 15 minutes.

Once we figured out the dough piece, I had to figure out what we were going to top it with. Immediately, the first one in my mind was the combination of halloumi, raw onion, and fresh mint, which we use in Cyprus a lot. Back home, we prepare this dough in round metal pans. It’s not quite focaccia; it’s just a plain dough that’s usually a little yeasted, with a lot of olive oil, and then topped with raw onions, mint, and all that. I had a lot of it when I was growing up. So I ran with that idea, baked it, and we all tasted it and said, “oh… this is GOOD. It’s very good.”

Definitely. I don’t think a lot of people around here are familiar with halloumi or that flavor combination, but it’s really delicious. It’s often only available seasonally though, so how did you land on the winning combination we currently have at the Bakeshop?

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to do. I remember trying a roasted broccoli-sausage thing, and it just didn’t work. But then I thought, “I’m using halloumi, so why don’t I try another thing we make a lot in Cyprus?” Something that’d typically go along the same breakfast table: marinated olives. If you came to our house for breakfast, there’d be a little bowl of cracked green olives with coriander, garlic, and lemon, sitting in olive oil, and you could just nibble. And then you’d take your bread and dip it in all the juices at the bottom of the bowl. We don’t have cracked green olives here, but we do have Castelvetrano olives. I love them; we buy them a lot for my daughter.

They ARE so delicious. I love olives, though; I’ll eat them like candy.

Right? The cool part of this bread is that even people who don’t like olives think it’s really good. Beyond the olives, raw garlic was a given, but then I remembered we have roasted garlic, too. That’s just another flavor explosion. And then great olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, and crushed coriander seeds. We tasted it, and… that was that. When Amy and Frank tasted it, they were both like, “Yep!” I’m used to going back to the drawing board a little bit to rework things, but these two combinations got the thumbs-up right away.

Awesome. So you had mentioned that it would be part of a breakfast spread. Do you envision the focaccia as part of a breakfast spread? What are some other serving ideas?

I think that would be great. You’d have to have super fresh, in-season tomatoes and cucumbers, the focaccia, a little bit of cheese, a little bit of coffee or tea. What more do you need? Or, if you want, you can fry up a sunny side-up egg and put it on top of the green olive focaccia. But I think they can be a snack during the day, too. The cool thing about this focaccia is, even if you take it home and take it out the next day at room temperature, it’s still great on its own. If you warm it up it’s even better, but it’s not like a bread that dries out that much for the first two days. After that, though, it would be better if you warm it up. Just snack on it as-is.

Agreed. I’ve only ever eaten it as-is, and I’ve never wanted for anything. I think that it’s super-satisfying, largely because of the whole grain. 

I agree. But even though it’s whole-grain, the crust is very mild-flavored. You can taste the grain, but it’s very subtle and the toppings just sing. Recently I’ve tried making it with a whole-wheat starter that we have in-house, and then the crust flavor is amped up even further. And then you can just eat that on its own! Bread so good you just want to eat it plain!

Hungry to taste our Green Olive Focaccia for yourself? Find it in our Bakeshop Friday-Sunday, or meet us at the Westside Farmers Market on Thursdays!

By Emily Hanka, Bakehouse Marketing Manager

Photos by Emily Hanka & Hazim Tugun

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Some things are forgiving—your favorite stretchy pants or an understanding friend, perhaps—but baking typically isn’t one of those things. It’s an exacting science that requires equal parts precision, artistry, and know-how. Today’s topic? Precision. If you’re not already baking by weight, we’re here to make the case for switching.

Here’s a situation that might sound familiar: You find a recipe that makes your heart go pitter-patter. You’re ecstatic to pull out your mixing bowl and whisk and give it a go. You follow the recipe in painstaking detail, pop it into the oven, and wait with bated breath for it to bake and cool. And then, when the time comes to taste test, something is just… off. Maybe it’s too dry, or it’s too oily, or the texture just isn’t right. Why have the baking gods forsaken me?, you ask, shaking your fists at the sky.

The answer may be sitting quietly in your drawer of kitchen tools. The humble measuring cup, the one you use to scoop and level your flour, is often the culprit behind disappointing bakes.

American bakers commonly use volume measurements. Many of us learned to measure by plunging a measuring cup into a crinkled bag of flour, leveling it off with a dusty finger, and dumping its contents into a mixing bowl. Here’s the problem, though: A cup of flour could weigh anywhere from 113 grams to 170 grams depending on the brand, the measuring cup you’re using, the method you used to scoop it… You can see how volume measurements open our bakes up to inconsistencies and imperfections. The best way to get consistent final products is to make the switch to weight measurements.

It can be unnerving to change your measuring method. Looking at a recipe listed in grams, ounces, or pounds, when all you’ve ever touched is an old plastic measuring cup, might be enough to send you running away from your oven. But fear not, dear baker! Weight measurements aren’t as frightening as they may seem. You can pick a weight unit that feels right for you, then head back into the kitchen to master the art of weighing.

How to succeed in weight measurements without really trying

Step one: Get your hot little hands on a kitchen scale. Choose for accuracy ratings; it’s important for your scale to get the numbers right every time. This doesn’t mean it has to be costly—you can purchase an effective scale for less than $20.

Step two: Learn the tare function. This lil’ button sets the scale back to zero, so you can measure ingredients directly in your mixing bowl without having to worry about, ya know, math. Forget about dirtying all those tiny measuring spoons, because those days are over! Just plunk a bowl on the scale, tare it, and add your ingredients one by one, taring in between. Or you can do one better and measure as we do at BAKE!, our very own baking school, for ultimate accuracy. Here, we measure each ingredient into its own container so we can easily double check weights and ensure that we’ve measured everything.

And the final step? Well, it’s more of an ongoing project. It’s helpful to familiarize yourself with some common conversions so you can comfortably replicate recipes regardless of their units of measurement. Luckily, we’ve already given you a head start.

Here’s a handy conversion guide for some common ingredients so you can conquer metric measurements with ease. Embrace your new scale with open arms, because it’s time to repair your relationship with the baking gods over a cup of coffee and a perfect scone. Your baked goods (and those who eat them!) will thank you.

So, how ‘bout it, folks?

Would you convert to a kitchen scale?

DOWNLOAD YOUR PRINTABLE CONVERSION GUIDE HERE!

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