BUDA BITES

This was a hot summer in Budapest and when we didn’t feel like cooking, our standard meal was a big tomato salad drenched in this deliciously nutty tasting pumpkin seed oil. The oil has a strong, distinctive taste which is probably acquired. I actually didn’t like it the first time I tried it several years ago, and since then I’ve tried a few other types of lower quality stuff that tasted nothing like this concentrated, dark green oil that we bought from a husband-wife team that makes the stuff near Lake Balaton*. They also produce walnut oil, honey and a few other artisanal products which they can be found hawking at various festivals in Hungary. Although a little of this pumpkin seed oil goes a long way, we managed to somehow finish an entire bottle of it (fortunately it’s supposed to be pretty healthy due to its high amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids).

When the oil was gone, I was left with two bags of pumpkin seed flour that I had bought at the same time and decided to turn into bread because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it. When I was in culinary school, my “baking 101″ class was one of my favorites. I became pretty good at turning flour and yeast into beautifully shaped, perfectly risen loaves (I even briefly thought that a baking career might be nice, until I remembered that I am definitely not a morning person). But, in the kitchen classrooms we had big mixers, proofing boxes, and convection ovens with steam. Since then, I’ve rarely been inspired to attempt to bake bread at home, where I don’t even have enough mixing bowls, let alone a proofing box to ensure that my bread rises properly.

But then I discovered this recipe for no-knead bread in the New York Times last November (which was written by Mark Bittman, and adapted from Jim Lahey at the Sullivan Street Bakery). The recipe sounded astoundingly easily, reliable, and good. It turned out to be possibly the easiest thing in the world to bake, and one of the most satisfying. Since then, probably ever food blogger has written about it. I adapted this recipe for no-knead bread in order to find a use for some of my pumpkin seed flour, and it turned out wonderfully. Rather than using the three cups of bread flour that Lahey used, I used one cup of pumpkin seed flour and two cups of bread flour (just like the oil, just a little of the stuff gives off an intense pumpkin seed flavor). If this is your first time baking this bread, don’t be alarmed at the appearance of the dough…just keep waiting (and follow all of Lahey’s instructions). The results are worth 18 hours that the bread takes to rise. Since the pumpkin seed bread has such a nutty flavor, it’s not the kind of bread to eat with jam. Instead, eat it with something that will stand up to it, like some good cheese.

* If you’re in Hungary, you can get the pumpkin seed oil and flour from: