Ingredients
- 1 kilo all purpose flour.
- 2/3 cup sugar (can add or reduce to your liking)
- 2 tablespoon yeast
- Zest of 1 orange
- Juice of 1 orange
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 2 eggs
- 4 tablespoons cooking oil
- Pinch of salt
Method
Add 3/4 of your flour, sugar, oil, eggs, orange zest and yeast and salt in one bowl. Mix well.
Add the orange juice to the flour mixture and stir.
It should be a bit heavy at this point, add the water little by little so that the dough starts coming together. If you put in too much water, add more flour.
Knead until the dough no longer sticks to your hands or countertop.
the zest can still be seen in the dough
Put your dough into a heat proof bowl, cover with a wet towel, and leave it somewhere warm to proof/bloom. Should take 20-40 minutes to bloom. if you do not have a heat proof bowl, you can leave the dough in a plastic bowl, but take care it doesn't burn.
During the cold weather, it may be hard to get a warm place to proof your dough, so you can improvise using a sufuria with hot water.
Place the bowl with the dough on top of the sufuria and let it sit for a while.
The longer you leave it the more leavened the mandazis will be and this could have a fermented taste and smell because of the yeast. When proofing time is done, the dough will have doubled in volume, and will be really soft to touch.
Punch the center of the dough. It helps release the air that is in the dough.
Dust your surface with flour and roll the dough to your desired thickness.
the rolling pin pic never misses
If you roll the dough too thin, the mandazis will have a big hole in the middle. Personally I don't like empty ndaos.
Thinly rolled dough
Cut into desired size strips
When frying thin mandazis, they get to swell up more in the oil
But they are empty on the inside
If you roll the dough too thick, you run the risk of not having the mandazis cook well. Many of my clients dislike fleshy mandazis because of fear that the mandazis are not cooked through.
Best served while they are warm.
Serve with a hot cuppa.
