Piki bread is a traditional Hopi bread made with juniper ash, blue cornmeal, and sunflower oil. It is difficult to make due to the hard-to-find ingredients, and is not widely available outside of Arizona. The bread is traditionally made by spreading a thin layer of the blue paste over a hot rock and rolling it into a tamale-like shape.
Piki bread, also known as Indian paper bread. It is a traditional Hopi bread that is considered cumbersome to produce, due in part to the difficulty of acquiring the necessary ingredients. Piki ingredients include juniper ash, blue cornmeal and sunflower oil. Although blue-gray bread is also made by Pueblo peoples in New Mexico, the bread is not widely found outside the Arizona area.
The hardest ingredient to acquire for this Hopi version of a tortilla is juniper ash. It’s the ash left behind by a burning juniper tree, so the most direct way to get the ingredient is to burn the tree yourself and get the ash. Less traditional recipes, such as those calling for the ash of various other plants, are available for those who really want to make bread. A Mexican tortilla flour known as masa harina is also used in some recipes as a substitute. The best place to get it, however, is at an authentic Hopi restaurant.
Cornmeal and sunflower oil can be purchased both in some specialty food stores and online. To make bread, the ash must first be boiled in water, then filtered. It is then mixed with the blue cornmeal and chilled before being formed into bread. The meal layer should be spread thinly on a cooking tool, such as a griddle. The traditional method is to stretch the blue paste over a hot rock, such as a slab of schist.
When the batter is too thick, it won’t cook properly. Once it is very thin, it is cooked for a short time before being rolled into a long tamale-like shape and served. While many people may use the oil to cook bread, another traditional way to make piki is to coat the cooking tool in the fat of the animal being served with the meal. Watermelon seeds have also been used to create the oil.
If you are using fresh blue corn in your recipe, you will need to grind it before cooking. The resulting bread is less of a loaf than it is a sweet, corny flavor. It is well known in the western states for its melt-in-the-mouth quality. It is also a very family oriented food, full of tradition. Hopi women once passed their piki-making knowledge to their daughters, along with their cooking stones.
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