Sheermal
Sheermal or Shirmal is a saffron flavoured traditional flatbread from Greater Iran. The Sheermal is derived from the Persian words milk and rub. In a literal translation Sheermal means milk rubbed. Sheermal traversed the Silk Route and came to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It later became a delicacy of Lucknow, Hyderabad and Aurangabad. Sheermal is part of the Awadhi cuisine.
The type of Sheermal I’ve attempted here is the Pakistani version. I came across this beautiful bread while randomly browsing on Instagram. I adapted the recipe of Cooking With Sariya to make this bread. It a slightly sweet bread but with a lovely flavour. Dipping the bread into water makes it almost spongy, that it’s so soft to eat. I paired it with Erachi Aanam which is a South Indian dish! It was truly North meets South!
The making video of this soft bread is below, the beautiful music is by Masoud & Sina Shaari , Pejman Hadadi.
The amazing part about this bread is that after making the bread, the hot bread is dipped into water and let to dry. That makes the bread soak up the water, bloom and the colour changes into a beautiful orange hue. This is a must try bread!
Sheermal
Ingredients
- 300 ml Milk room temperature
- 10 gms Yeast
- 1 cup Castor sugar
- ½ tsp Sugar
- 1 tsp Saffron
- ¼ cup Milk
- 3 cups Maida
- 1 tsp Cardamom powder
- 1 no Egg
- 1 tsp Kewra essence
- 150 gms Ghee / Clarified butter
- ¼ cup Butter melted
- 2 tbsp Sugar syrup
Instructions
- Mix milk, yeast and sugar well and leave it aside for the yeast to ferment.
- Mix lukewarm milk with saffron strands and set it aside for about 10 minutes. Mix well till the milk turns orange, remove the saffron strands and set it aside.
- Sift maida into a large mixing bowl. Add the cardamom powder, egg, kewra essence, saffron milk and salt to the sifted flour.
- Mix it loosely with your hands. Pour the yeast, milk and sugar mixture to this and start kneading well for about 10 minutes.
- Once a tight dough has been formed add the ghee into the dough and knead again for 10-15 minutes till the ghee is well absorbed into the dough and the dough is smooth.
- Cover the bowl with a cling wrap and leave it aside to ferment for about an hour and a half.
- Once it has doubled in size scoop the dough from the bowl and place on the counter-top and make a log shape. Cut it into 4 equal portions.
- Roll each of the cut dough into a smooth ball.
- Dust the surface with a little flour and start rolling the sheermal dough using a rolling pin.
- You can also roll a little and then take the sheermal and move it a little with your hands and roll again. Roll it to ¼ inch thickness until you have a 5 to 6 inch diameter circular sheermal.
- Dust excess flour off the rolled sheermal. Now with a popsicle stick or the straight end of a spoon make small incisions on the sheermal in straight lines.
- Repeat this until the entire sheermal has incisions. Heat the tawa (skillet) on low heat. Make sure the tawa is hot enough before you place the sheermal on the tawa.
- Let it cook for 4 minutes until you see some bubbles on top side and the bottom part a bit dark.
- On the grill setting of the oven.
- Place the half cooked sheermal on a tray and place it in the oven and grill it till the top part is brown.
- Take enough water in a large bowl to completely submerge the sheermal.
- Take the sheermal out of the oven and dip it into the water. All the sides of the sheermal must be well soaked. Soak it for about 10 seconds. Take it out of the water and leave it on a cooling rack.
- Mix the melted butter with the sugar syrup and brush it liberally on the soaked and dried sheermal.
- Repeat the same process for the rest of the sheermal dough.
- Enjoy this amazing bread with any spicy curry!
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