easy flatbreads
A recipe for easy flatbreads, made without yeast, to demystify the idea that bread making is hard. Ubiquitous in Lebanon, good flatbreads are not easy to find in Bristol. Supermarkets sell them, but once you’ve looked at the long list of ingredients, you might not want to add them to your shopping trolley. The chorleywood process means adding disodium diphosphate, calcium phosphates, sodium carboxy methyl cellulose and calcium propionate to name a few. While they keep supermarket bread soft and fluffy for a long time, it might also have you wondering what these ingredients are doing to your health.
Flour, water, salt and Zejd’s extra virgin olive oil are the ingredients in this easy flatbread recipe below. Nothing more. Without yeast, this is a quick way of making the requisite flatbreads for a Sunday lunch of roast chicken. In our household, roast chicken is unthinkable without garlic sauce and flatbreads. Often there isn’t time to wait for bread to rise, so this recipe means we can have flatbreads to scoop up chicken and garlic sauce without it taking all day.
With so many food products within our reach today continually being pushed at us by clever marketing, this recipe is a reminder that the ingredients for bread are simple. This recipe gives you control over what you’re eating: your health and wellbeing matter. The food industry is less interested in your health than in its profits! Give it a go, and enjoy the magic of bread making in a frying pan.
ingredients
500g flour (plain works fine, if you don’t have strong flour)
325g water
25g Zejd’s extra virgin olive oil
10g salt
method
- Mix the flour and water with the oil and salt until it comes together as a dough.
- Knead by hand for 7-10 minutes, or 5 minutes in a food mixer with a dough hook. Leave to rest for 30 minutes.
- Divide up the dough into 10 balls, and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
- Scatter some flour on a clean surface, and using a rolling pin roll each of the dough balls into a flat circular disc roughly 17cm diameter.
- Heat up a non-stick frying pan, which has a lid. When hot, add one of the circular discs. Put the lid on, leaving a small gap for the steam to come out. Leave for 2 minutes. Check that the underneath of the bread is coloured, then flip. Replace the lid, and allow another minute just to colour the other side. They may inflate partially or totally.
- Place on a baking tray while you continue with the remaining dough.
- They can be kept warm in a clean tea towel until you’re ready to eat.
In Lebanon flatbreads are essential for every meal. Small pieces of bread are torn, and used to scoop hummus, baba ghanouj and labneh. Bread is wrapped about pieces of chicken, kofta and kebab. It keeps your fingers clean and the food tastes better for it. Leftover pieces are toasted and added to salads.