Piadina (Flat Bread)

With Joan and Jim Malkin

When you normally think of Italian bread you immediately think of a loaf, but this traditional Italian flat bread will change your attitude. Jim Maulkin, who in another video with his wife Joan showed us how to make a Seafood Pasta dish, learned this easy and tasty alternative from a friend’s mother in Bologna, Italy.

Originally, piadina was cooked on an earthenware plate called a testo, which was placed over hot coals. Today piadina are usually made on the range top using a modern day testo of ghisa (cast iron), or a heavy well-seasoned black cast-iron pan.

For ingredients all you need is flour, dry yeast, salt, olive oil and water.

In this video Jim shows how he prepares the dough with a food processor but it can also be done by hand. To make by hand pour the flour on a work surface forming a fountain. Add the extra-virgin olive oil and knead the dough using just enough lukewarm salted water to obtain a rather firm dough. Knead vigorously for approximately ten minutes. Allow the dough to rest for 15-20 minutes.  Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. Roll or stretch each piece of dough into a disk about 8 inches in diameter.

Heat a heavy well-seasoned black cast-iron pan on the range top. Before cooking, test the pan by letting a few drops of cold water fall on it. The pan is ready when the water skips and sputters across its surface. When the pan is hot, place a disk of dough on its surface. Let the disk heat well on one side and then turn it over. When little charred bubbles form on each side of the disk, the dough is ready. Cook each disk of dough in this manner, stacking the cooked piadine in a towel so that they stay warm.

Ingredients

1 cup of flour
½ teaspoon dry yeast
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½  teaspoons oil
1 small bowl of ice water
1 tablespoon salt

Instructions

1. Pour 1 cup of flour into a food processor. Add salt, yeast, 1 teaspoon of oil and 3 teaspoons of ice water and turn on processor. (It should take about 3 minutes from stat to finish to get a properly formed dough.) 
2. As dough begins to mix, add 3 more teaspoons of ice water. After about 1 to 2 minutes, add another ½ teaspoon of oil. If the dough begins to form wet dough on the bottom, stop the processor and mix drier ingredients on top with the wetter ingredients on the bottom. Add another two teaspoons of water and begin mixing again.
3. As the dough begins to form pea size pieces, you can remove the dough and by hand knead the flour into a ball. Set aside under a dishtowel for about 10 minutes.
4. After uncovering, rub the outside of dough ball with flour and flour a counter surface for rolling out the dough.
5. Divide dough into 4 equal pieces and by hand roll into a sausage shaped piece. Taking the floured rolling pin, roll out into an elongated, flat piece of dough.
6. Heat the griddle but do not oil, adding salt before laying out pieces of dough to cook. When bubbles appear on one side check the cooked side, and if necessary, rotate to achieve equal cooking. When one side has become equally browned and cooked, repeat on the other side.

Serve warm in a breadbasket.

Recipe courtesy of Jim Malkin, 2011.

Jim and Joan Malkin now live in Chilmark, MA and have been cooking together for the 30+ years of their marriage.  They’ve lived in or traveled to over 50 countries for business or pleasure – everywhere they went they dove mouth first into the local cuisine.

After starting out in Boston, MA, Jim and Joan lived in Sydney, Australia for 12 years – working and raising their two children.  The family discovered the clean flavors of Australian fusion cuisine as well as the complex combination of ingredients in traditional Asian cooking.  They traveled for business and pleasure throughout Asia and, with each adventure, paid keen attention to the bright and spicy flavors of  the different Asian cuisines, all of which they replicated in their kitchen for family and friends.  Living later in London, they discovered that English food had moved from “stodge” to the eclectic food of the gastro-pub.

In the 1970’s they took French cooking lessons from Madeleine Kamman in Massachusetts.    Later, they took cooking classes in Morocco, Wales, India and Mexico.  Along the way, Joan also took Spanish cooking lessons and a class from David Bouley in New York.

Food and wine is fundamental to the Malkin family.  Despite the demands of two careers and the bedtimes of growing children, the family ate together at the dinner table every night.  Many business dinners with work associates and clients were held at home, rather than at a restaurant.  The Malkin Family Cookbook, a collection of personal favorite comfort foods was compiled for the children’s 21st birthdays.  Jim and Joan continue with their tradition of an annual black tie 8-course dinner party for 12 friends in which they share the tastes and flavors they have enjoyed over the years.

Seafood pasta is a flavorful illustration of Jim and Joan’s belief that a “one pot” meal with an accompanying salad, a glass or three of wine and a bit of bread and cheese can be a healthy, easy and tasty way to dine.

Although many people are tied to the white wine with fish tradition, the Malkins believe that the day that they can't drink red wine with fish will be the day they give up fish.  They love a Sangiovese, a red Sancerre or a light Cabernet with seafood.  These wines augment the Australian Shiraz that Jim claims constitutes 50% of his blood stream.