These rings (based on the recipe for 'Greek Sesame Galettes (Κουλούρια)' in "Mediterranean Street Food" by Anissa Helou) were baked in the barbecue. Hamburger buns and naan can be made with exactly the same method.
They look pretty fancy but the shaping was very easy to do by simply twisting two sesame encrusted ropes of dough together and joining the ends to form a ring. The shaped rings are laid well apart on parchment paper (this parchment paper has been used at least 4 times before for other bread and cookies).
After shaping, they were left for about an hour to rise before being put into a very hot barbecue to bake.
Because the barbecue heat is uneven, it's important to turn the trays around. And because of the honey in the dough, the rings had to be turned over as well; they were getting quite dark on the bottoms well before the tops were cooked. It's essential to move quickly so that the heat in the barbecue isn't lost.
The hazards of baking in the barbecue are that there might be uneven cooking. But the advantage of NOT turning on the oven when it's hot and humid far outweigh the disadvantage of creating a few dark spots.
We loved these twisted bread rings so much that we made them again and again. But smaller. And instead of sesame seeds, we used kalonji (nigella seeds) on half the buns. Kalonji is also delicious in onion pilao or baked onto naan.
One of these loaves was twisted just after shaping. The rather strange ends on both loaves is a result of them being too long for the stone.
We are hard pressed to decide which scent is more intoxicating: the smell of freshly baked bread or lilacs wafting in through the open kitchen window.
