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(upbeat music)
So what's cool about flatbread
is it gives us the opportunity to explore
the three most common means of leavening for bread.
First up, the lack thereof or unleavened bread
and essential combination of flour and water
that has sustained humanity for thousands of years.
This particular preparation in combination
you may recognize from Indian cuisine as roti or chapati.
We're combining 260 grams of whole wheat flour
and 70% of that flour is weight in hot water or 182 grams
to the bowl of a food processor,
where we're gonna blitz it for about two minutes.
If you've seen my episode on pizza dough,
you know that the food processor is an excellent vehicle
for gluten development,
the building and strengthening of the network
of strands of gluten in your dough.
To see if your gluten is developed enough,
you wanna grab a little piece
and see if you can stretch it out thin enough
so that light passes through it,
otherwise known as the window pane test.
If it tears too easily or if it's too sticky,
you can process it further or knead it by hand
until it's smooth and elastic and supple
and can stretch thin without breaking.
If it's way too sticky, this is also an opportunity
to work more flour into your dough.
Once it's smooth, soft and bouncy,
you can either wrap it in plastic wrap
and let it rest for 20 minutes to allow the gluten to relax
to make it easier to roll out
or you can go straight into rolling it out right away.
I'm gonna grab a 50 gram or a golf ball sized ball of dough,
I'm gonna roll it out as thin as I can possibly get it
and pass it back and forth between my hands to knock off
any excess flour and then bring it over to the stove top
where I've got a cast iron pan preheated
over medium high flame
to a surface temp of 475 degrees Fahrenheit
or just lightly smoking.
Pop in our roti and let it sit
for about 60 seconds undisturbed.
During this time,
it should just begin to beautifully bubble.
Take a peak and once it starts picking up
a little bit of color,
we're gonna flip it over,
letting it cook for no more than 15 to 30 seconds
during which time it's gonna start to really bubble up
because you see, even unleavened bread
is still technically leavened or a leavener,
in this case being plain old water.
Once done cooking on the second side,
we're taking the pan off the flame
and placing the bread directly on the flame.
And this is where the real magic starts.
Watch in awe as the water evaporates into steam
and fills up the bread like a balloon,
sort of defining the term flatbread, if you ask me.
We're cooking it for less than five seconds per side
before taking it off the heat
and keeping all our warm roti in a clean dish towel.
Serve hot with a little melted ghee and garlic
and use leftovers to make things
like mini frozen breakfast burritos.
Stuff with low fat ingredients of your choosing,
roll it up and you've got yourself a fast, easy,
healthy breakfast,
if you don't eat them all
before they make it to the freezer.
For our next style of leavening,
we're gonna take a look at pita bread,
which is leavened using yeast.
We're starting by combining 120 grams of bread flour
with eight grams of instant yeast.
And we're adding 225 grams of tepid water
around a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, mix it all together,
cover it and let it rest until foaming about 15 minutes.
This is called a pre-ferment
and not only does it make the dough more workable,
it improves oven spring something very important with pita.
Once that's done, we're adding another 240 grams
of bread flour, 20 grams olive oil
and six grams of Kosher salt
then kneading together using your favorite method
about two minutes in a food processor,
six to eight minutes in a stand mixer on medium speed
and anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes by hand,
depending on your forearm strength and general gumption.
No matter how you knead it together,
we just want it to pass the window pane test.
We need a strong network of gluten
not only for great texture
but so our pita can blow up like a balloon.
Once you got it where you want it,
we're gonna roll it into a nice tight ball
and place it into a lightly oiled bowl.
Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise
at room temperature for one to two hours
until it's about doubled in size.
This is called the first rise or bulk fermentation
and it develops the dough and improves the flavor
and texture of our final bread.
I got 600 grams worth of dough here,
so I'm gonna divide it into 100 gram pieces
to make six pita.
We can just eyeball it,
you just want your pieces to be generally the same size.
Then we're gonna roll them against the table
pinching their edges so that they form a smooth top top
kind of like pizza dough,
the rounder you make these dough balls now,
the higher chance you'll end up with a perfectly round pita.
Arrange these with plenty of space between them
on a sheet of parchment paper
set in a rimmed baking sheet,
cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap
and let rest at room temperature for about 20 minutes
or up to an hour if you really wanna improve
your doughs flavor and texture
plus make it way easier to roll out.
Just like last time on a very well floured countertop,
we're rolling this guy out to maybe a six inch round,
a French rolling pin like this one is great
because it gives you leverage and control
over which parts of the dough you're rolling out.
Make sure you get rid of excess flour
by either patting it back and forth
or using the pixie dust method.
And there you have it, this pita is ready to get cooked
and there are a few different ways
that you can accomplish this.
Probably the easiest way is on a pizza stone
set in a 500 degree Fahrenheit oven
you've preheated for one hour.
Pita bread is a lot like pizza dough.
You wanna hit it with as much heat as possible
as quickly as possible
so that it blows up like a balloon,
cooks all the way through
and picks up some nice browning along the way.
Give it a flip after about a minute and a half
and let it cook for maybe another minute and a half
before removing and keeping warm in a clean kitchen towel.
The need for high heat also makes the cast iron skillet
a worthy contender
but the one sidedness of this heat
can cause a rather uneven pocket to form very thin
on one side and thick on the other.
Don't get me wrong, it's still gonna be way better
than store-bought but it might be harder
to make a sandwich out of.
Due to its similarity to pizza,
it stands to reason that the ultimate pita
could be made in the ultimate pizza oven.
Get this guy preheated to about 666 degrees Fahrenheit
mark of the beast, plop it in the center and watch it grow.
Pizza ovens offer the perfect balance
of conductive, convective and radiative heat transfer
that makes perfect pita pretty darn easy.
It rises perfectly and evenly browns quickly
and is done in about 60 seconds.
And especially if you're using using wood-fire,
there really is nothing quite like fresh hot pita
you've made yourself.
Store-bought pita tastes stale and flavorless
and almost poisonous by comparison.
You can use one of these halves
to make the low carb sandwich of your choice
but the classic remains freshly fried falafel.
That's hard to say freshly fried falafel
and all the fixings.
There we go, I did it.
Next and last, we're gonna take a look at
chemical leavening.
In this case, a simple yogurt flatbread
courtesy of Bigger Bolder Baking.
We've got 360 grams of all purpose flour,
10 grams of baking powder and three grams of Kosher salt
that we're gonna tiny whisk together until homogenous.
And then we got 440 grams of whole milk Greek style yogurt.
Add that to the dry stuff
and it's the same story as before,
knead it out until it's smooth, supple
and passes the window pane test.
The gluten development in this case is more for texture
than function.
Our bread is not gonna blow up like a balloon
but the better we develop the gluten,
the nicer chew our bread will have.
Same deal, 50 gram golf ball sized ball
that we're gonna roll out about as thin
as we can possibly get it between six to eight inches wide,
a perfectly respectable circle size
but this time, because of all the beautiful milk proteins
present in the dough,
we're gonna fry it in butter oil or ideally ghee.
Get that ripping hot in a cast iron or carbon steel skillet,
drop it in round and fry it on one side for about 60 seconds
or until it is beautifully bubbly, browned and burnished
like this.
Another 30 to 60 seconds on the other side
and you've got yourself the absolute best wrap
you've ever had in your entire life.
Or if you're feeling cheeky
and you feel like using that pizza oven
you got fired up in the backyard,
you can make yourself a nice little quick flatbread pizza.
I'm just loading it up with my favorite toppings
chicken, pesto, Mozz, Parmesan
and in your home oven or in your pizza oven
heat it to about 500 degrees Fahrenheit,
we're dropping it on the stone, closing her up
and letting her get all melty and crisp.
And before you know, you've got yourself a quick and easy
quote, unquote pizza,
especially quick and easy when you consider that all three
of these breads well, best enjoyed fresh.
Freeze and reheat beautifully and easily.
Have myriad applications and taste way better
than their store book counterparts.
Hope you guys try it for yourself and hope you enjoy.
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(slow upbeat music)