Baking With Heritage: A Romanian Flatbread With Roasted Tomatoes by Roxana's Home Baking

Hello everyone, as you all know, I do a lot of baking with yeast over here at Food Wanderings. This year I am kicking off a new Baking with Heritage series, asking baker friends to contribute a baking with yeast recipe from their tradition and background. If you bake with yeast, and would like to guest in this series, drop me a note. To inaugurate this series I have here the very talented Roxana of Roxana's Home Baking, with her grandmother's Romanian flat bread. Thank you Roxana for sharing this heirloom recipe with me and Food Wanderings' readers. Please hop over below and get a pretty wholesome look at what Roxana is all about. Make sure to follow her baking endeavors!

Hello Food Wandering fans! For those of you who do not know me, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Roxana and I'm the baker, writer and photographer behind Roxana's Home Baking - where passion meets cravings. My blog is focus on baking everything from scratch no matter if it's just a simple cookie, bread or a layer cake. I'm passionate about baking, especially yeast breads and lover of all things chocolate. I just recently started a mini series about Bread Baking. When Shulie asked me to bake a bread that reminds me of my homeland, Romania, I knew I had to share the recipe for a flatbread my Grandma used to make us almost every week.
Flatbread with roasted tomatoes. Recipe from Roxanashomebaking.com
I have lots of memories about my Grandma, but most of them involve bread baking. She loved baking bread for our big family. She'd start by sifting the flour in the big oval wooden bowl while we'd happily gather twigs for the wooden oven to heat it up. Most of the time a big chunk of the dough, after it had risen was made into fried doughnuts which we'd sprinkle heavily with sugar for a mid-week sweet snack and the rest of the dough was divided and rolled out to make bread.  Carefully my Grandma would poke holes in the dough not to allow it to rise too much.

Dehydrated GoldRush Apple Chips & Life, Not For The Faint At Heart

I had promised awhile back to post this dehydrated apple recipe, but it has taken me some time to deliver. As you can tell from this, I have been obsessed (a reoccurring theme) in recent years with the GoldRush apples. Golden Delicious has now taken the back seat. In the DC area, I have only seen the GoldRush at Farmers Markets. It makes the outing on a weekend worthwhile, even if only to pick up some apples, mushrooms and local cheese.
For dehydrating apples I found over the years that most apples will work with an exception of one, the Granny Smith. I love the Granny Smith apples in baking, I won't substitute it with any other variety, but when it comes to dehydrating, they are my least favorite, one dimensional tart notes only. The dehydrated apples can have a softer rubbery feel but if you keep them in the oven longer they turn into chips. The apple chips shatter like thin glass at the faintest touch, it's really neat.

Harissa

Harissa, a North African condiment, most associated with, but not exclusive to, Tunisia. There are so many versions of Harissa within North Africa, not to mention the similar Yemenite Schug and the South East Asian Sambal. The purest, most basic version of Harissa is made with rehydrated dried red chili peppers, garlic, salt and oil to seal and preserve. Great on sandwiches, fish and a dabble to jazz up soups, just to name a few uses. I love the kick my version got with that beautiful orange color, achieved by emulsifying the olive oil with the ingredients in the food processor.

Silent Sunday - Clementines

Every now and then on a Sunday, sometimes on a Wednesday, I will upload photos of the seasonal weekend bounty I get at the Farmers' Markets, Costco, Asian or other grocery stores. If you've been following me for three years or so, you might remember my Costco Finds and Farmers' Markets installments.
Speaking of Costco finds, these are bursting with flavor Jaffa clementines I found there. Firm and delicious. It gave me some comfort to find these beauties as I neglected to photograph the orange groves on a Moshav I was staying at, on my recent trip to Israel, and the citrus trees, I particularly recall a lemon tree, in my sister's yard. It was a combination of the volatile weather conditions and pressing family matters I had to attend to.
Many of these photos will be raw ingredients, as with the clementines, that we love to just snack on. No cooking, no messing around, purely fresh, without any loss of the Cs.

Scenes from a Friday Morning in Tel Aviv Seaport & HaCarmel Markets

Dim Sum very trendy in Israel lately. Many Asian restaurant openings and Dim Sum stalls in both Shuk HaNamal (Tel Aviv Seaport) Market and HaCarmel Market.