Pressure-cooked baked beans with amazing flatbread

I love baked beans. I love fresh bread, despite people saying low-carb diets is the name of the game. So how about the richest bean and bacon stew you’ve ever had, with some cold proofed yeast flat bread straight from the pan? All done in a pressure cooker, intensifying the flavors. You will love this!

This is what you need for the flat bread

200 g of wheat flour
100 g of rye flour
6 g of dry active yeast
15 g of malt syrup (you can use honey instead, but malt syrop really has a very distinct flavor!)
10 g of salt
100-150 g of water (just keep adding until your dough is very moist but holds together, then stop!)
A drizzle of oil.

This is what you need for the baked beans

200 g of dry Navy beans (“regular” white beans, the ones you find in Heinz baked beans cans)
400 g of water
100 g tomato paste
40 g molasses (you must find this, it gives an amazing flavor! But I know it’s hard to find, so if you don’t manage, at least try to find dark Muscovado sugar. It has a similar flavor)
20 g regular sugar
No salt, unless you’ve made the recipe ones and know that your bacon/pork belly isn’t salty enough. In that case, add salt at the end. Next time you make it, add the same amount of salt from the very beginning.
3 garlic cloves (minced)
A couple of good dashes of Worcestershire sauce (about 10 grams)
10 grams of Dijon mustard.
5 g bicarbonate (baking soda. If you don’t have that, put about 7 g of baking powder instead)
2 black pepper corns (under pressure, they should release flavor it’s said. I’m not convinced yet, but let me know…)
200 g onion
300 g smoked and salted pork belly (preferably a thick piece so you can cut it into nice cubes. If not, then sliced bacon will do although the pieces won’t be as much fun)
30 grams of vinegar (a light one, like apple cider vinegar)
Two big handfulls of parsley

Day 1 for the bread and baked beans

Combine all the dry bread ingredients into a large bowl, including the syrop.
Kneed it in a stand mixer or by hand, adding little water at a time. The dough should be really moist, but hold together. I really mean really moist, so don’t spare the water! The only time it’s too much water, is when it’s more of a porridge than a dough. Then add som more flour.
Let kneed for 15 minutes in the machine or 20 minutes by hand.
Drizzle some oil into a clean bowl, move the dough into the bowl and cover with some plastic wrap.
Refrigerate for 24 hours. Wonderful aroma will soon be produced.
Now put dry beans into some kind of container, cover with a lot of fresh water, and leave it for 24 hours.

Day 2 for the baked beans

I’ll make it easy for you… In a bowl, you mix all ingredients except the onion, beans, vinegar and parsley. Make sure to mix it alls throughly.
Chop the onion into quite big pieces.
Drain the beans, and place them in a pressure cooker together with the chopped onion and the sauce mix (1.).
Close the pressure cooker, and turn up the heat to high. As soon as you hear the valve making loud sounds, you’re up to pressure. Now turn down the heat to medium or even lower. As a matter of fact, lower it as much as you can while still maintaining pressure. If the valve goes silent, you need to raise the heat again, and try lowering. This time a little higher than when you failed. Eventually you’ll find the minimum setting on your stove needed to keep the pressure. Anyway, once you’re pressure cooker is under pressure… You start counting down… 20 minutes!
After 20 minutes, don’t try to speed up the pressure lowering. Just let the cooker stand there, and cool itself. While it does, the beans keep cooking.
Cut the smoked pork belly into nice big cubes (about 2×2 cm)
Add the pork belly into the beans.
Repeat step 3. But this time, cook for 10 minutes.
Let it cool, until you can open the lid.
Try it. Too little salt? Add some more. You had no idea how salty the bacon would be, so it’s better to be late than sorry.
Add finely chopped parsley, and vinegar.
Baked beans ready to serve. With what? Bread! Which leads us to…

Day 2 for the bread

Heat up a pan on medium-high heat.
Take the dough out of the refrigerator.
Sprinkle some flour on your work bench.
Rip of a piece of dough and make a ball out of it.
Flatten the ball with your fingers, and then use a rolling pin to flatten it even more.
Put the flat dough onto the hot pan, and watch the magic happen. Air pockets will form, and the whole bread will puff up.
After about a minute, turn it over to the other side. Let it fry for up to a minute, but be careful not to burn it.
If 1 minute burns the bread, lower the heat. If 1 minute doesn’t make it even close to done, raise the heat. See your first bread as a test.
Serve with the baked beans! I put a little salted butter on my bread seconds before serving.