@Goldie I had to look up "socca" 'cause I never heard of it before. Interesting. I wouldn't have thought you could make flour out of <del>chickpeas</del> garbanzo beans. I'd expect mush, not flour, though one could dry them before grinding, of course.
BTW, I always feel like I should write "chickpea" in some really narrow font, and "garbanzo" in something wide and florid. I just love the word "garbanzo"---I usually pronounce it in a big, rolling voice. P.T.Bridgeport is what I'm aiming for.
As 'gram flour' chickpea flour shows up a lot in Indian cooking.
Peas in bread also show up in medieval horsebread. There's a whole article about it here - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250977320_English_Horse-bread_15901800 - which I hope is publically available. And it cites a 14th century London ordinance to the bakers - no “horse-bread be made except of pure beans
and peas, without mixture of other grains or bran”
@AspiringLuddite
@BasilDragonstrike
The rosemary and thyme smelled amazing out of the oven and the stuff was tasty. But I don't have a cast iron skillet and didn't want to fire the broiler for it, so it wasn't street-food yummy, I s'pose. I'd like to compare with a version from the better-equipped sometime.
I would think you could do it in any reasonable skillet, the trick would be getting a thin layer. I may have to have a play with this. I tend to keep gram flour around.
@AspiringLuddite Yeah, mine was thick-ish in glass pan. Consistency heavy and moist, but it's also 50/50 flour and water with plenty of olive oil. That with that thickness and less heat intensity... I don't want anything to smoke up with a bird in the house, though. I did find a good non-fake olive oil, bit of a peppery taste
@Goldie
I had a look at a few recipes - lots of variation in quantities of oil and some in water to flour ratio.
I've made fritters with chickpea flour but they were stupidly dry. Pancake is probably a better model ...
@AspiringLuddite
Also, given the quantity of oil I slid around the pan (besides the 2 tbsps in the mix), I was surprised it stuck to the pan. I'd like to dry it a bit with less oil but don't want to dig it out. So I guess the other route is thinner, but this thick pancake was the thickness I wanted, so not sure which thing to tweak.
@Goldie
So, I had a go at this ... I kept the idea of 'crepe' in mind, and made a thinnish batter of gram flour and water, with just a splash of oil. (And some salt and oregano.)
Hot skillet, but not hot enough for the amount of batter I put in - so I got a little sticking. Little oil in the skillet, too.
I'm pretty happy with it, though.
@AspiringLuddite
Niiice. How hot was your oven? My recipe called for 450, pan pre-heated in that. Batter sizzled on the pour. Then 12 - 15 minutes. At 13 I turned off the oven and let it sit just a bit before it came out. Got sticking and edge-toasting only.
Stovetop - no oven at all. Nice thin layer, cooked 'em like crepes in just a couple of minutes. I got greedy, and tried to flip it before it was ready which is why the picture isn't of a perfect circle.
@Goldie
I pretty much always use olive oil. And you'll certainly need to season/re-season it at some point, so if you want to practice on it new, might as well;-)
Oh, and as an aside/follow up on the socca - I think leaving the batter to sit for a while to fully hydrate before cooking may be important. The fritters I made a while ago were painfully dry, and these were not.
Hmm. Weird. More experimentation is needed. For Science!
@AspiringLuddite The batter had a half-hour sit. Bit too heavy and moist rather than the opposite.