Flatbread

Seriously, I cannot come up with a better title.  Or name for the flatbread, for that matter.  I think my creativity is suffering from lack of sleep.  I have a 5-month-old and a very active almost 3-year-old.  Something's gotta suffer, right?

How gorgeous is that?

Oh, well, moving on.

Anyway, tonight was a busy night for cooking in my little crazy world.  In addition to the flatbread, I made 2 new dishes (a chicken dish and a potato side dish).  To avoid blog overload and because I simply don't have the energy tonight, I'll be honoring each part of the meal with its own post.  Tonight, I'll start with the flatbread.

The back story:  The Boy is showing signs of being milk-protein intolerant which causes him to have some gastric issues.  Since he's breastfed, this means I need to eliminate all dairy from my diet.  And they put dairy in EVERYTHING!  Seriously, this doesn't just mean giving up milk, cheese, and sour cream.  Le sigh.  How I miss sour cream.  You also have to eliminate all foods containing whey, whey protein, milk protein, and casein.  That shit is in everything.  Canned chicken noodle soup has whey in it.  Certain brands of canned tomato sauce and canned beans "may contain traces of milk".  Certain brands of ketchup have milk in them.  All butter and margarine is gone.  To make thing so much better (sarcasm), milk intolerance is often accompanied by SOY intolerance, so if you eliminate soy as well, you can't eat anything processed or packaged.  Well, almost anything.  It's a bleak, sad world out there, folks.

Anyway, that's where I'm at, trying to plan menus that don't contain dairy and the limit the amount of soy (I'm not being as strict on that one).  The good thing is is that it is forcing me to read labels.  The bad thing is that I am horrified by what I'm seeing there.  It's not just the inclusion of dairy and/or soy in strange places.  It's all the additives, preservatives, and general what-the-fuck-is-that shit that's added into our food.

Now, my go-to lunch is chicken salad on toast.  However, I can't have commercial bread (contains dairy), and I have yet to find a good dairy-free bread recipe that comes out the way I want it to.  So, I decided to try pita pockets or flat bread from the grocery store.  This is what I found:

The ingredient list for one brand of flat bread:

Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid, malted barley flour), water, soybean oil, yeast, contains 2% or less of nonfat dry milk, salt, wheat gluten, sugar, dough conditioner (acacia gum, guar gum, ascorbic acid, L- cysteine, enzymes), calcium propionate, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate), and sodium stearoyl lactylate.

Yeah, I don't know half of what that shit is.  And the store I went to didn't carry pita pockets, but I'm assuming the ingredients would be similar.  So me being me, I decided that, damn it, I'll just make my own flatbread.  After some searching, I came across this recipe.  This is a yeast-based flat bread, but there are other version that use baking powder instead of yeast.  I'm a big fan of yeast, so I went with this one.

I made my first batch last week and it yielded about 8 pieces that time.  I rolled the pieces fairly thick, aiming more for bendy, chewy bread rather than crispy.  My husband, however, wanted me to try it crispier this time, so I rolled the pieces much thinner and got a total of 14 pieces this time.  After having it both ways, I prefer it slightly thicker and chewier, so next time I make it, I'll aim for the middle ground and 11 or 12 pieces or so.

Now that I've rambled on for so long, I know you're dying to get started, right?  Right.

You will need:

You can't get much simpler than this.

• 3 cups flour (all-purpose or bread.  I used bread flour) * - please read the note below about flour before proceeding.  It's important, yo.
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm (about 110°) water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for bowl and for basting
• Coarse salt, about 2 teaspoons, or more if you want a saltier bread
• Sea salt, pepper, fresh herbs of your choice

* IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE FLOUR:  One of the mistakes I made when I started baking bread was how I was measuring my flour.  I was using my measuring cup to scoop the flour out of the bag and then leveling with a knife.  Because this was packing the flour tightly into the measuring cup, I was inadvertently adding much more flour than I needed and it was causing me to have very heavy, dense breads.  Don't make this mistake!  Instead, you want to spoon the flour lightly into the measuring cup, don't pack it in, and gently level it with a knife.

Lightly spoon your flour, don't pack it in.

Gently level the flour; again, don't pack it in.

Also, with this recipe, I think 3 cups of flour is too much.  I always have flour that refuses to come into the dough.  So, start with 2 cups and add flour as you need to.  You may need all 3 cups, but my guess is that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-1/2 cups will probably work fine.  Also, if you're using a whole wheat flour, please remember that whole grains absorb water much more than white flour, so you'll either need to use less flour or more liquid.

Now the fun part:

1.  In the measuring cup where you have your warm water, sprinkle the yeast on top.  Wait for it to foam (5-10 mins).

Yeasty goodness.

2.  While waiting for your yeast to proof, in a medium bowl mix together the flour *, salt, sugar, and olive oil.  Add in the yeast/water mixture, and mix until a dough forms. 

Flour, sugar, salt

With the olive oil added

3.  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead lightly for about 2 minutes.

4.  Grease a clean bowl with olive oil.

5.  Place dough in the piled bowl, turning to coat thoroughly.  Cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm, draft free place until dough doubles in size (about an hour or so).  Helpful hint - If you house is always cold like ours is, it will take forever for your dough to double.  So, here's what you do:  Turn your oven on for 30 seconds.  That's it, just 30 seconds.  Turn oven off.  Place bowl with dough in oven, close door and do not disturb for an hour.  It'll work, trust me.

Starting point

The dough has doubled

6.  Once your dough has doubled, turn it back out onto your lightly floured surface and cut it into however many piece of bread that you want.  If you want a thicker, chewier bread, cut less pieces.  If you want a thinner, crispier, cracker-like bread, cut more pieces.  The recipe was originally intended for 16 pieces, so I wouldn't try to do more than that.

See my nifty dough scraper?  It's very handy for cutting dough and for scraping your work surface clean.  You know you want one.

7.  Heat your oven to 350° with your baking sheet inside it.  You want your baking sheet to be hot as it will make for a crispier bottom crust.

8.  Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out a piece of dough.  Again, use your discretion depending on how thick or thin you want your bread.  Place rolled bread onto a piece of parchment paper.  Repeat until you have enough pieces to fit on your baking sheet.  I am able to fit 3 to 4 pieces on my sheet at once.  Keep the extra dough in the oiled bowl and covered with plastic wrap.  It will continue to rise slightly.

The pieces don't have to be perfect.  Rustic is the word of the day, boys and girls.

9.  Here's where the original recipe and I part ways.  The original recipe called for an egg wash on the dough.  I opted instead to baste the dough with olive oil.  You choose which route you want to go.  Once you've basted the dough, sprinkle on sea salt, pepper if you want it, and any fresh herbs you would like.  I generally just do salt and pepper, but once my herb garden is up and running, I may give something like rosemary a try.

So much prettier than an egg wash.

All dressed up and ready to par-tay!

10.  Once your baking sheet and oven are hot, carefully (CAREFULLY, people), transfer the parchment paper with the bread onto the hot baking sheet.  Bake until golden brown, about 22-25 minutes.  start checking them at 20 minutes, though, especially if they're on the thinner side.

11.  Carefully remove the bread from the baking sheet to a wire rack or heat-proof plate or cutting board.  I don't have a wire rack, so I move my hot bread to a wooden cutting board that I use exclusively for breads.

Fabulousness!

12.  Repeat steps 8 through 11 until you've used up all your dough.  While one batch is cooking, I will get the next batch prepped to go into the oven.  If you can fit more than one baking sheet in the oven at a time then you just want to make sure everything bakes evenly.  I only do one sheet at a time so it can sit in the middle of the oven and I don't have to worry about some pieces baking more than the others.

It doesn't get much better than this!

13.  Enjoy the yummy goodness that is this very simple flatbread!  Extra pieces can be stored in a ziploc baggie for a few days, but we eat them so quickly I don't have to worry about them going bad or stale

So, there it is!  Very easy, very tasty, and free of scary additives and preservatives.