Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Flatbread or Flat bread

Bread is an ancient food and the original form was likely flat.  The simplest formula is to make a dough based on  flour and water.  Flours are made from may crops: cereals such as wheat, maize, rice or rye; legumes such as peas, or lentils;  and starchy root vegetables such as potato, cassava,
A leavening agent,  from the Latin levare - to lift or raise, is used to entrain bubbles of a gas - such as carbon-dioxide - into the dough.   Adding living yeast,  which coverts starch into carbon-dioxide,  is a common leavening method.

Unleavened Flat Breads

Unleavened flat breads are arguably older recipes.   
Yufka , "saj bread" bread made on a saj pan. 
  • Markook,  shrak,  also called sac ekmeği (saj bread) , or yufka,  in Turkish,  are made with a saj or tava , a large metal pan. Traditional village sac pans are large and convex facing up. They are mounted over a wood fire on stones, brick or metal frames.   The thin dough, also called yufka in Turkish, is similar to filo dough - see below.
  • Roti -  also known as chapati, is made from atta flour - a whole wheat durum flour - and baked in a tandoor oven.   Paratha is a related bread.
  • Paratha -    Paratha is made by using a roti dough and making layers by repeatedly coating with ghee and folding - creating a puff pastry effect.  Parathas can be filled with layers of potato or
    meat.
  • Filo dough , called yufka  in Turkish,  is the base for many flat breads and pastries.  Filo (phyllo), leaf in Greek, is about as thin as a sheet of writing paper.   
  • Börek is a class of filo-based pastries many of which can be considered flat breads.  
  • Su böreği - 'water börek'  -  a thin filo-like dough (with eggs) is boiled briefly in large pans, A mixture of feta cheese, parsley and oil is scattered between the layers. The whole thing is brushed with butter and laid in a masonry oven to cook.
  • Lavash - (Armenian) is soft, thin, unleavened flatbread baked in a tandoor oven.  It is common all over southwest Asia.  
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Leavened Flat Breads

  • Bazlama -  is a Turkish, sourdough flatbread with a light yellow color.   A fermentation starter is added to the dough and it is left for a day to ferment .  It is baked on a hot plate. 
  • Pita -  is a slightly leavened flat bread that puffs up during baking and forms a internal pocket. This is due to high oven temperature, thickness of the dough form, leavening, and moisture content. 
  • Naan, or nan,  is a  leavened, oven-baked, south Asian bread.  Nan tends to be made from refined, white flour these days. Nan is traditionally baked in a tandoor.
  • Sangak - from Persia,  based on whole-wheat flour,  is baked on a bed of small river stones in an oven.  
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