aLeeNa learns to cook!: Bake and Saltfish

Bake is sort of like a Guyanese version of pita bread. Usually when fried it expands like a pocket of air in the dough, but for some reason me and my mom's bake didn't turn out like that but it still tasted good! Oh, and of course we ate it with saltfish. I didn't know how to explain saltfish, other than saying its fish but thanks to the internet saltfish is "salted, dried codfish". Anyway lets talk about bake first since is so awesome. I can eat this bare because its so good.

First we have to make the dough, so we put the flour, water, salt, black pepper, and this orange powder in the mixer. Now, I have no idea what that orange power was but my mom said its optional and its only to give the bake that orange yellow color. Another side note, my aunt puts a little sugar in the mix to make it sweet. All options.
After thats mixed good, add the onions, shallots, and pepper. I linked it to a picture of pepper we used called "wirri wirri pepper". After all the mixing you end up with a big pile of dough

We let the dough sit for a while as my mom cooked other things. After letting it sit for a good 15 mins or so, you separate the dough into balls for each bake. This amount of dough makes about 10 bakes.

Then you add some flour to the balls and roll it out with your belna (rolling pin lol). The flour is added so it won't stick to the rolling pin or the table. When it sticks, boy is that annoying!

Then once the hot oil is heated up well, you slowly drop the dough into the oil. Don't just fling it in there like I did once upon a time. the hot oil will pitch on you and hurt ._. Once the dough floats up in the oil, then you turn it over and let the other side cook. When you see bubbles (give it like 2 mins or less) then its done. Im pretty sure the dough was supposed to inflate into a balloon shape but ours refused to do so lol.

After taking the dough out of the oil, put the bake into a bowl with paper towels so the excess oil will soak up on the paper towels. Wait for it to cool off (or not) and then eat with saltfish or anything really.