Cookbook:Kubaneh (Yemenite Pull-Apart Bread)

Kubaneh (Yemenite Pull-Apart Bread)
Category	Bread recipes
Servings	8
Time	3 hours
Difficulty

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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 upon dying embers or coals) shortly before nightfall where it remains until the following day, when it is eaten for the Sabbath meal or at brunch.

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)

Procedure

1. Dissolve salt in lukewarm water.
2. Sprinkle yeast over lukewarm water and add sugar. Leave for 10 minutes until yeast is foamy.
3. Add yeast mixture to flour, and knead to form a dough.
4. After kneading the dough, allow it to sit 10 minutes until it begins to rise.
5. 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.
6. Grease the baking pot with the vegetable oil.
7. Divide dough into smaller pieces (8–10 round pieces).
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. Turn bread out onto a plate, turn bread upside down, and restore to baking pot.
11. Cover pot with lid and bake another hour; or reduce oven temperature to 200 °F (93 °C) and bake overnight. If desired, remove from oven and afterwards return it only close to the Sabbath.
12. Serve hot with clarified butter, usually also with tomato salsa mixed with chopped coriander.

Notes, tips, and variations

• During the winter months, some had a custom to add to the baking pot along with the Kubaneh a piece of the fatty-tail of sheep, in which case the bread became a meat-dish. When the bread was eaten as a dairy dish, they would pour butter over the dough portions before inserting the pot in the oven.