[Sca-cooks] What Samidh Flour Isn't

[David Friedman]

Lots of al Warraq's recipes specify samidh flour. I have usually 
interpreted that as semolina, following out Charles Perry's suggestion, 
but there isn't much evidence. Nasrallah, the translator, mentions two 
similar kinds of flour of which the samidh has lower gluten. That 
suggests that perhaps I ought to be using ordinary bread flour, or even 
cake flour, as per our recent discussion.

So I decided on an experiment. I've done the recipe for crumbly crackers 
multiple times using semolina, and been happy at the result. They keep 
well and my daughter likes them, so too many isn't a serious problem. 
Finally, the recipe specifies quantities for flour and water, by 
weight--both measured in ratl's, giving an unambiguous ratio. I mixed up 
two batches, one using cake flour and one using ordinary all purpose flour.

The recipe tells you to knead vigorously then set aside to ferment. In 
the case of the cake flour, that was impossible, because using the ratio 
by weight specified in the recipe produced something closer to a batter 
than a dough--not kneadable. The regular flour wasn't quite that bad 
when I initially mixed it up, although it was pretty wet, but by the 
time it had fermented for ten hours, my usual, it too was too liquid for 
the final kneading. I ended up putting in about half again as much flour 
in each as the recipe called for.

I don't know whether samidh is semolina but it could be. It can't be 
anything very close to either of the other two flours I've tried.




-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/