Isfunj al-Qulla: Sponge Cake Cooked in a Jar

I have a memory, more plausible than most from that time, that soon before my first stroke I ordered
cake to share with my husband on his birthday. I didn't get the cake, I don't even know if this is a real
memory or one of those confused hallucinations but I have decided that if I had to die I would like to
eat cake.

Isfunj al-Qulla

(Sponge Cake Cooked in a Jar)

I have learned in the last year or two that bread has been made for thousands of years and that some of that early bread was flat unleavened bread and some was raised by yeast.(1) But packaged yeast didn't come out until many centuries later. It could only be made in quantity after yeasts were discovered by Louis Pasteur who saw yeasts under the microscope for the first time.(2) Before that point wild yeasts developed in mixtures of flour and water (sourdough) which were kept going for centuries and passed down from generation to generation. Yeasts were also cultivated from the Lees which is a by product of making alcohol. Period recipes for some breads such as Manchet call for Beer or Ale Yeast or Barm.(3)
This is a medieval middle eastern cake made with sourdough. I have made this several times since
February and what I handed out at the Newcomers Event in May went over very well. It seems we all
like cake. This is a translation from Kitab Fadalat al-khiwan fi tayyibat al-ta'am wa-l-alwan (“Book of
the Excellent Table Composed of the Best Foods and the Best Dishes”) an Andalusian cookbook(4)
written by Ibn Rezinin in the 13th century.(5)

“Knead semolina or extra-fine flour, making a soft, light dough. Take a small new jar and pour into it
quite a lot of oil, enough to coat the walls and the bottom. When the dough has risen, fill up the jar
[with it], almost as far as the neck, and stick a palm rib inside, or a reed without knots that has been
soaked in oil, and take the jar to the oven. Leave it far from the fire until the cooking [is done]. At this
point, remove it from the oven and gently stake it to pull out the reed. Into the space occupied by the
reed pour some honey and samn or melted butter, let it sit for a moment, and then delicately break the
jar so that the contents remain perfectly intact. Sprinkle with cinnamon, moisten again with samn and
honey, and eat, may it please God.”

When I first tried redacting this recipe I followed the instructions as closely as I could. The first step was to make the sourdough. I've tried many recipes for making sourdough and I find this one works best for me:
½ cup whole wheat flour
mix ½ tsp honey in ½ cup unchlorinated water
(since I have city water I boil tap water for a couple of minutes and let it sit uncovered until only warm, that takes about an hour and releases the chlorine back into its gas form. It takes a lot less time to do that than to let it sit overnight.)
Mix the ingredients to make a batter. Cover with a cloth towel and leave in a warm dark place with
some air circulation.
Stir once a day and feed with more water and flour every 5 to 6 days.

When you make the sourdough starter you need to do it in a glass container (I use a jar) and stir it with a wooden spoon. The reason for this is that metal can give it an off taste and the sourdough doesn't develop well in plastic. Once it has started fermentation it can be transferred to a plastic container if you wish. You must use un-chlorinated water because chlorine will kill the yeast you are trying to develop. You must keep it out of direct sunlight because sunlight will also kill yeast.

Since at that time I didn't have semolina and the gluten content is so high in that type of flour that it would make the cake tough I used a combination of white and whole wheat all purpose flour figuring that was close to the “extra-fine flour” of the middle ages. I use about 1 part whole wheat flour to 3 parts white flour and then add a little wheat germ.

After 2 to 3 days you should find that it no longer smells like wet flour and has taken on a pleasantly
sour smell or may even smells like fresh baked bread. You should also see some good bubbles (that is
fermentation). If you get fermentation but the smell isn't pleasant that means that your local yeasts will probably not taste good either. (Different varieties of yeasts and bacterias which also live in sourdough live in different areas and they all taste different.) I thought I had photos at this step but they never get saved in the camera.

Continue stirring once a day until day 5 or 6. This is a photo of the dough at day 5. You can see that
fermentation has almost stopped. It is time to feed the yeasts.

Feeding is just adding more flour and water in an equal amount to what is already in the batter, because I was in a hurry to get a decent amount of sourdough started I started with one cup each of flour and water and 1 tsp of honey. Here I am splitting it in half so that there is ½ cup of flour in each batch and then adding ½ cup of flour and ½ cup of water (remember to use un-chlorinated water). The honey only needs to be added to get fermentation, after that you don't need to add it.

10/23/12 This morning it didn't seem like there were many bubbles but in looking closer I realized that the dough was just kind of thin so it couldn't rise well. I added about ½ a cup of whole wheat flour and 1 ½ cups white flour with some wheat germ added to total 2 cups flour. I also added 1 cup of water and ½ tsp of kosher salt. I mixed the flour in a ½ cup at a time and added the water part way in so that I could keep the dough mixable. Below is showing the additions of flour, how full that made the glass jar which holds 5 to 5 ½ cups and the last photo showing how dark the batter ended up. The mix of whole wheat and white flour is because in order to make what they referred to as a “white flour” they “bolted” or sifted much of the bran out of it.

 The flour can be added to the sourdough starter all at once or over 2 or 3 days. This time I did it all at once. Since it was more than half full I put the jar in a bowel (non-reactive metal) because when it rises it often overflows and makes a big mess if the overflow is not contained and the overflow is needed to fill the baking dish. Since I did that in the morning I stirred it in the evening to work in more oxygen (yeasts breathe oxygen and need it to continue multiplying, it's the same reason for the final kneading of bread.)

10/24/12 I checked the sourdough this morning and it had only risen enough to touch the cloth cover

and not overflow. The other one I was running with the extra was only about half full and completely

overflowed. I figured out that it probably works better with my yeasts to feed them more slowly but I

am working on a deadline. It also still seems just a little thin so I added ½ cup of bread flour and another ½ tsp of kosher salt to help strengthen the gluten strands. I will let it rise till this evening and

then see if it is ready to bake. The other batch of sourdough I am hoping will be ready soon enough so

that I can make a second cake with ground candied orange peel (my modification of the original

recipe). Since there is a recipe in the same book for candied citron peel which I followed in making the candied orange peel I don't think it is too much of a stretch to think that it could have been ground and added to the cake.

The cake dough is ready to bake. I coated a glass bread pan with butter (the recipe said oil but I used

butter since the cake has melted butter and honey drizzled over it and more ingredients mean more

chance of allergy issues) The first cake I tried to make I tried baking it in a can with a wooden spoon

soaked in oil inserted into the center. I tried to do it that way because I didn't have a reed or palm rib to use and I didn't bake it in a jar because the only jars I have are glass and when it is broken to get the cake out it would leave small invisible shards that would kill anyone who tried to eat the cake. Using the can didn't work either. In the first couple of pictures on making the sourdough it shows a burnt wooden spoon lying in front of the glass jar. That's how the spoon got burnt. In order to get the cake cooked on the inside it had to become so overdone and burnt on the outside that the whole thing

including the can had to be thrown away. This is how I do it now.

Coat a glass bread pan with butter on nonstick cooking spray. Fill it about ¾ full with the sourdough

cake batter. Let it rise in a warm place for about 30 to 60 minutes, hopefully it will rise almost to the

top of the bread pan. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and bake on the middle rack until it separates

from the sides of the baking dish and a toothpick inserted in several places comes out clean. I thought

that takes about 30 minutes but I was checking it every 5 to 15 minutes for at least another half hour. I

think if I had not taken it out to check it as often it would probably have taken 50 to 70 minutes. The

second cake I made with ground orange peel was still slightly moist at 50 minutes so I gave it another

15 minutes.

After it is removed from the oven start heating ¼ cup of butter and 1/3 cup of honey over medium high heat. Bring it to a boil and remove from the heat until the bubbles die down, you can speed up this process by stirring. Do this 3 to 4 times then remove from the heat. Let the syrup cool a little while you take a skewer and poke holes all over the top of the cake (still in the bread pan) then carefully pour the melted honey-butter mixture over the cake and let it soak into the holes and fill the space between the bread pan and the cake. This works just as well as the reed inserted into the cake in the original recipe.

Let the cake sit until the syrup is soaked in, about 30 minutes. Carefully remove the cake from the pan and place on a platter. Dust the top and sides of the cake with ground cinnamon until it is well covered.

Boil another ¼ cup of butter and 1/3 cup honey just as before. After boiling the syrup it helps to let it

cool about 10 to15 minutes before you pour it over the top of the cake and let it drizzle over the sides.

Take a spoon and scoop up the syrup puddling around the cake and keep drizzling it over the cake until it has cooled enough where more of it stays on the cake than runs off. Let cool before eating or store in a covered container.

This cake will have a slightly sour taste as if lemon was used in the batter. That taste is from the

sourdough being feed every day and not allowed to continue to a much more sour flavor. Because you

bring the honey-butter to a boil a couple of times it thickens a little bit and tastes more like

butterscotch. To make the orange version add 1/2 to 2/3 cup ground orange peel and into the last

feedings. You may need to reduce the flour just slightly, you want to end up with about 4 cups of cake

mix, adding the orange peel will cause the cake to rise higher and faster because of the extra sugar.

After the cake is made and the last coating of honey-butter is added garnish with candied orange peel.

Below are pictures of some of the cakes I have done before. They got taller as I practiced and learned

that a thicker batter makes a taller cake. I also learned that if you add sugar but not orange peel to the

batter you don't get that lemony flavor and it ends up a little bland.

1. “Artisan Breads” by Jan Hedh, 2011
originally published in Swedish as Brod by Prisma, 2004
2. http://www.exploreyeast.com/article/history-yeast
3. http:/ www.whirlwind-design.com/madbaker/breadfaq.html
4. “Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World” by Ailia Zaouali, English translation 2007 by the
Regents of California, University of California Press
5. http://medievalcookery.com/etexts.html