#lavash recipe without yeast

[katierosefun]

okay so another update on caroline’s cooking adventures,,,,and here are some things i have learned (i am sorry if most of this is obvious but im like. im stupidly proud of myself adfdsfs)

i made myself dinner while also baking brownies and that was very hectic 

i have learned how to actually make rice on the stovetop (making rice without a rice cooker is still so bizarre to me but hey! i made my rice fluffy!!!!! wash/rinse your rice multiple times until the water is clear, then dump it into the boiling water. pop on the lid, set the water to simmering and set a timer for maybe 30-ish minutes. also watch lid because sometimes all these bubbles will climb up to the lid and then it’s bubbling over so just....remove lid for a second. (and the pot i made the rice in was big. i had no idea the bubbles could climb that high!!)

so tortillas are significantly more expensive than lavash (a kind of flatbread very common in western asia), so i got lavash and used it to make quesadillas/burritos and stuff (i’m so sorry i’m 10000% sure this is the wrong way to eat lavash pls take pity on a broke college student just trying to do her best) 

omurice is actually easy to make. (set stove on high. whisk eggs (probably 2 eggs, 3 eggs if you’re making a bigger size/have a bigger pan) until it’s kinda soup-y, and then dump eggs on the pan. turn the pan around so the egg liquid is a circle in your pan. lower the heat!! when the egg’s set, flip the egg over to cook the other side. when done, put the egg in a bowl of your choice. make fried rice (that’s what it omurice basically is), dump that fried rice in your egg-bowl. grab a plate, slide it over the egg-bowl, dump said bowl over plate. remove bowl, and viola, you’ve got yourself omurice. cut slits in the egg, grab ketchup if that’s your thing.) 

cooking is 1000000% just about playing with heat? (all the times i went ‘oh shit oh shit this is way too much heat gotta lower it’) 

also....i know this is obvious but dONT put that much oil on your pan because when you heat it up the oil just SPITS at you and it hurts a lil’ so uhhh yeah just be careful when pouring oil 

okay idk how helpful this is but my mom always did it so i do it now too but after cleaning your pan, fill it up with like a small pool of water, set it on the stove and just boil the water to kill off any extra germs. you can dump the boiled water back in the sink. 

make pancakes over medium heat always. i burned so many pancakes cooking on high first. yes, this is probably obvious too, but i was dumb and, again, did not realize how heat on stovetops actually get hotter over time. 

meatballs are actually very easy to make? just ground beef/pork, egg, breadcrumbs, seasonings. i put green onions in mine because korean meatballs demand it. fry up on stovetop, set lid over the pan and turn it down low to get it evenly cooked. 

it is, in fact, possible to bake brownies and cookies with salted butter, just so long as you cut out the salt in the actual baking recipe. (also my brownies came out a+++++. extremely gooey and yummy and i am very proud of myself for not freaking out with this new oven.)

this has been said over and over again but generic brands are your best friend when shopping because oh my god the times i’ve found things that are like a dollar to 3 dollars cheaper because they’re generic brand god bless (ie. my supermarket’s generic brand of chocolate chips was a whole two dollars cheaper than the nestle chocolate chips, and while two dollars off might not seem like a whole ton, it’s all about these smaller savings that pile up. also, my supermarket’s generic brand of frozen fruit was also a whole dollar off, and not only did they have a bigger variety of fruit (strawberries!!!!), but there was also more stuffed in the bag, so!!! worth it!!!!) 

i am now considering if buying yeast is worth it because i want to make bread but also. broke college student + bread takes time but also can u tell i stress-bake. 

#caroline talks #my cooking adventures have been fascinating #i am actually learning that i like cooking for myself #it helps me relax #and also i have learned that my version of saying 'i love you a lot' is cooking/baking #my friend came over to my suite the other day and she just ranted to me while i quietly made pancakes #and then today i made brownies and left a bunch of them in the kitchen for my suitemates #i think my suitemates think i hate them when no! im just an anxious child #so uh i left a note and was like 'uhHhH i made brownies help yourselves :)))' #(also i dont hate you i promise i'm just a shy person who doesn't know how to respond to affection) #some days i relate to anakin because i'm so stupid and don't know when people genuinely are being nice to me #and i also relate to obi-wan because i am. not the biggest on dramatic declarations of love #but instead....i do small things like make food and also do the dishes and offer to read papers and join support groups for friends #ah i see now that acts of service might be my love language #because im. #when i say 'let me cook for you' i secretly mean 'hi i care about u a lot and want you to feel happy and loved' #i am but a quiet gal who expresses love through handwritten notes and baked goods and cooked meals and laundered sheets

[thisismrbrendanjay]

Bread, But Complicated

No one knows when the first loaf of bread appeared, but I suspect it has something to do with cats.

Bread is such a marvelous thing and our language reflects the joyous nature of bread. “Companion” and “company” from the Latin companio or “one who shares bread.” In English the term “Lord” comes from the Anglo-Saxon hlaford (say it with a Scottish accent) or “loaf ward” from the master who would pay the farm help in bread. “Lady” comes from hlaefdige a word which meant “loaf kneader” the person who assists in bread making. These words stayed in the English language well into the 20th century with hep cats referring to the money they’d earned as “dough.” (When they weren’t paid in bread, Roman soldiers were compensated with salt and from this we still have the phrase of “that man is worth his salt” “salt of the earth.” The salt-payment for labor is also where we get the word “salary.”)

Human have eaten crushed grass seeds such as wheat and barley for as long as we’ve been human. Turkish barley meals (likely beer) go back 10,000 years. 

Setting down and growing wheat grass may have contributed to civilization. But it also created a new commodity that could be stolen, either by warring outsiders or even just by mice and squirrels. If ancient Egyptian tombs could talk they would do a lot of mewing. Excavations throughout the years have churned up cat deities, cat sculptures, cat hieroglyphs, and hundreds of prized, embalmed cats.  These cats guarded the tombs and patrolled the grain storage areas for mice and rats. Previous to the discovery of leavened breads many cultures ground up grass seed into a joyless gruel to slurp up. Into the Stone Age humans organized themselves well enough to grind some of these grass seeds into flatbreads they could cook on a hot stone or coals. These ancient recipes pre-date loaves of bread and survive today as Eastern lavash, Green pita, Indian roti and chapati. A corn version of this in the Americas survives as the North American Johnnycake and the tortilla.⁠

But sometime about 6,000 years ago, as best we can tell, a bowl of refined slop left out for a while in Egypt started to spring to life. No one then could have known just what the hell was going on and it’s important to point out that we just barely understand it today. 

Any home cook today can try and recreate these early breads by making a sourdough starter. The basic method requires you to make a pancake-batter-like 50/50 mixture of flour and water and wait for it to grow a flavorful culture of bacteria and natural yeast, usually over the course of several days. To keep the mixture from spoiling you have to “feed” it fresh flour every day so that the bacteria does not overtake the yeast culture. But, just where do they come from? The all important Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis bacteria munches on a sugar within the flour called maltose. But that bacteria has never been found anywhere on earth except in a sourdough bread culture⁠2. This suggest that this “wild” culture is actually a domesticated one and, like the Egyptian housecats, they depend us us feeding them. It also means that the best way to start a sourdough bread culture is to make sourdough bread a lot.

Bread makers would save a bit of their last dough as a “starter” to leaven their next dough.

As an alternative to just heaping everything into a stand mixer and seeing what happens, the French bread authority Rayond Calvel recommends bakers “autolyse” their dough balls by mixing just the flour and water and letting it stand for about half an hour before adding any leavening or salt. According to Calvel this helps the starch and gluten proteins to absorb the most water and makes them easier to handle and they require less kneading.

The bacteria turns some of the maltose into glucose and the fungal yeast converts this glucose into into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The yeast really does a number on the sugar. For every one molecule of glucose it ingests it spits out two molecules of alcohol plus two molecules of carbon dioxide. It takes what is essentially a solid and spits it out as a gas and a liquid. The liquid alcohol makes the dough light and springing while the gases keep it bubbly.  A small amount of added sugar can increase yeast activity, while a large amount can decrease activity, as in with heavier sweetbreads.

C6H12O6 -> 

Squirrels bury nuts so they can eat them in the spring when they have fermented into something they can digest better, birds hold seed in the craw until a similar reaction occurs, and humans get the most out of their grass seed when bacteria and yeast fungus dig in first. This will happen naturally and rapidly at about 95F. If you can keep your dough somewhere around 80F you’ll get a relatively quick rising dough in a few hours. (Bread guys suggest putting  your dough in a bowl and putting it in cold oven and then turning on the light, which creates an environment just above room temperature.)

In the 1920s bakers in Vienna began to experiment with breaking the rise into two segments. First they would mix, ferment and shape the dough into loaves. Then they would refrigerate it overnight. Cool temperatures slow the microbes and yeasts take 10 times longer to raise bread and the CO2 they release will also stay cool and take up less space. and shape get a more mature flavor out of it.

You could drop this mixture into a pan and cook it at 500F for twenty minutes and have something that looks like bread and delivers just as many calories. But you’d miss out on all the fun.

The part of the bread and one that concerns people with celiacs disease comes from gluten. When the water is added to flour and mixed the glutenin proteins start to form long, springy chains that give the dough is elasticity. Coincidentally these chains looks exactly like the looping corkscrew of signature icing on top of a Hostess Cupcake.

These glutenin chains can be coaxed into forming a cooperating unit by kneading either by hand or in a stand mixer. By stretching the gluten coils and then folding them over and over they encourage side by side bonding which helps the dough maintain a shape. If you imagine each gluten strand as a piece of thread a good loaf is woven together like plaid. Note: kneading is often confused with rolling out or compressing your dough, but this will only de-gas all those beautiful bubbles of CO2 that will keep your bread light. Knead comes from an indo-european root meaning “to compress into a ball.” Related words include gnocchi, quenelle, knoll and knuckle.

The American imagination of bread my always look like a loaf, but most bread history concerns balling up the dough into a tight boule and even baguettes begin their life as dough balls hence the word for baker in French is boulanger—the baller if you will.

You can squish a hole in the center of the dough, boil it and then toss it in the oven to make a bagel. You can let gravity or force stretch it into a disk and bake it into a pizza. You can fold it over itself a few times and stretch it into a baguette.

It is worth noting that many Americans who experience symptoms of gluten intolerance report that it completely goes away when they eat bread in France. This is likely due to technique rather than the quality of the flour. Many Americans are familiar with a hard, crusty baguette that looks and could perform as a Louisville Slugger. There is plenty of bad bread in France, but most towns will have one boulangerie where they bake their baguettes in specialized steam ovens. By keeping the crust of the bread hydrated as the “ovenspring.” This means that even though the loaf or the slice of bread you’re eating from a steam oven just contains less heavy flour and therefore fewer toughened strands of gluten.

Home cooks can recreate this by baking their loaves in a heavy cast iron or enamel Dutch oven. Without steam the dough surface reaches 195F in four minutes. With steam it can get there in under a minute. 

A quick word about our American ovens: these things are possibly the worst place to bake bread. I’m sorry! Americans with gas ovens have a maximum temperature of about 500F and you’re lucky if it can get up to that temperature after a pricey and wasteful hour of preheating. The thin walls of these ovens don’t retain or radiate much heat. Gas ovens have to be vented to allow the combustion gases to escape (CO2 and water). But when they do they take all the bread’s steam with it and the oven’s internal thermostat will fluctuate the amount of gas being burned at intervals you can’t control. Electric ovens perform much better in the bread making department. Most home cooks can improve their chances with a simple pizza stone. Some ovens have an option for a ceramic insert. Lately a new breed of heavy steal has taken over.

Active dry yeast was only introduced in the 1920s. This allowed home bakers to start and finish a loaf on the same day. To “wake up” the yeast culture the home cook would first have to soak it in warm water but only between 110-115F. Instant dry yeast came out in the 1970s and is dried quicker than active dry yeast and comes as small porous rods that take up water quicker than active dry yeast and doesn’t need to get pre-hydrated. It produces carbon dioxide more enthusiastically than active dry yeast. Recipes refer to both as “yeast.” Strangely, using less yeast and a longer rise will lead to a better flavor. The concentrated yeast has a quite harsh flavor.

When you put room temperature dough in the hot oven a couple of exciting reactions happen one by one that makes bread bread. Starting at 99F alcohol vaporizes while the water in the dough is still in liquid form and the hydrated gluten strands begin to stretch. The dough ball itself will rise and begin to sweat until a crust forms on the outer edge. Heat from the bottom of the oven moves through the viscous gluten matrix while steam bubbles form, pop and create cavities where the real baking happens. Well leavened dough will have steam moving fast though it. The first 6-8 minutes of dough will decide the shape of your loaf.

Then something quite magic happens again just before the water boils. When the loaf reaches 155-180F the gluten proteins from strong, archway-like cross links. Meanwhile the starch granules absorb water, swell, gelate and amylose molecules leak out of the granules. Now your dough will take on the flavors and the sweet aroma of bread. The steam and CO2 will escape and the pressure builds, rupturing the inside. Now instead of a foam made of many little trapped bubbles the mixture turns into a sponge where gasses can pass easily. If this network didn’t form with the magic of gluten and gellified starches the mass would just collapse in on itself when cooled.

Baking continues as the center of the sponge reaches boiling point. A good baker will take the lid off of the dutch oven after about 20 minutes and give the crust a chance to form. The browning of the crust is a flavorful form of the Maillard reaction—the same no-sugar-added reaction that produces caramelized onions, carrots and, later, toast. Named after a French physician named Louis Camille Maillard who only described this process in 1910. We call this process caramelizing, but a true Maillard reaction will produce a meaty, umami flavor and kick up aromatic molecules of nitrogen and sulfur. This is why a crust of bread can taste and smell both leafy, floral, earthy and meaty all at once.

Pull that out of the oven and you have pretty much the same bread that Cleopatra’s cats would have seen. The crust will have a hydration of about 15%, the moist inside will stay that way at 40% hydration (down from 70% in the dough phase). It will possess no alcohol. If you tap on the bottom of the dough it should sound hollow. While cooling (very important) the hydration will even out and the gelated starch granules will become firmer—making it easier to slice.

The best way to store bread is to eat it. But if you do want to keep it around for a few days it does well in a regular paper bag. (Sorry, Wonderbread, but plastic bags encourage mold growth.) Staling won’t take place for a few more days. In 1852 a Frenchman named Jean Baptiste Boussingault hermetically sealed a slice of bread to prove that staleness didn’t come from a loss of moisture. He showed that you could bring the bread back to life by cooking it at about 140F. We now know this as the temperature when hard starches turn into a gel. 

So that process is how humans made bread for the last 6,000 years.

#baking bread

[foodreceipe]

In times of great uncertainty, knowing how to make your own bread and thereby feed your family, is palpably reassuring. The very act of kneading dough is calming, like Play-Doh for adults. So, of course, newbie bakers are all over social media, obsessing about “bubbling mothers” (AKA sourdough starters).

 Look a little closer, though, and they’re not very happy. “We are all baking bread and some of us are not so good at it,” tweeted  one journalist, dejectedly. That’s because sourdough is high-maintenance baking. People write memoirs about mastering the technique. By contrast, watching Noji Gaylard making South African steamed bread (see below) is like hugging a baby. Three minutes and 30 seconds of pure calm. Her recipe, alongside the others included in our 10 basic breads, is easy enough for even the most inexperienced baker.

 But first a note about yeast.  As Adrian Chiles has noted, it was stockpiled right off all the shelves earlier this year. So, if you do have any, set aside a portion of whatever leavened dough you make to leaven the next (variously called  old dough and  pâte fermentée; you’ll find plenty of instructions for this online). And, if you don’t, you could try making your own yeast. Lisa Bedford, the self-styled Survival Mom,  has written a really thorough how-to. I appreciate that making your own yeast somewhat negates the premise of this piece, but you’ve got to admit it’s awesome that you can.

 Also, reserve any pasta or potato cooking water for your bread baking. As  Nigella tweeted: “It will help the bread’s texture and rise.”

Flatbreads

 At its simplest, a flatbread is flour and water mixed into a dough, rolled into balls, rested, flattened and griddled. Dan Lepard  tweeted the basic ratio: 500g of any wheat flour (white, wholemeal, self-raising, plain) to 300g cold water. Add some form of oil to the mix, and you get everything from  chapatis and rotis (  Meera Sodha fills hers with coconut, raisins and almonds) to  tortillas and  lavash.  Jamie Oliver switches things up a bit, using yoghurt, self-raising flour and a little baking powder, and cooks with griddle pan over a high heat. Elsewhere, his  coconut flatbreads are made with just coconut milk and self-raising flour and fried in butter.

Quick Bread

 AKA batter bread, this is the base recipe used in such things as apple bread, banana bread and the French  savoury cake studded with everything from bacon and olives. You mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) with wet ingredients (milk/buttermilk/yoghurt, oil and eggs) and flavour it any way you like.  Kristin “Baker Bettie” Hoffmann gives you every option thinkable: sweet, savoury, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan and without baking powder (she separates the eggs, and whips the whites to get the rise needed). Texture-wise, this is more on the muffin/cake side of things, so if that’s not what you’re after, read on.

Soda Bread

 The original no-kneader, and  as Chiles put it last week, a gift to the yeastless. The rise comes from bicarb, so that ingredient is a must, but flour-wise it’s flexible:  wholemeal, oatmeal,  rolled oats,  plain,  self-raising,  rye or whatever mixture you can manage. Liquid-wise, milk, yoghurt, buttermilk, Nigella’s pasta water: they’ll all work, too. You’ll want a dollop of salt and sweetness (honey, soft brown sugar); Chiles flavours his with treacle and Marmite, and nothing has ever endeared a columnist to me more. And there’s nothing to say you can’t jazz it up further: Oliver puts  dark chocolate and hazelnuts in his.

No-Knead Crusty Loaf

 The New York Times calls  this the world’s easiest yeasted loaf; a step-up from the already groundbreaking  easy method devised by Jim Lahey (if you’re a budding bread person, I recommend his books). You mix plain flour with yeast, salt and lukewarm water into a loose dough, cover and let rise for two to five hours. Then you shape it and bake it. The crustiness comes from having a broiling panful of water – or a few ice cubes – in the bottom of the oven to steam the loaf while it cooks.

Pitta

 Putting yeast in a wheaten flatbread essentially means it can puff up while baking, to create those soft pockets so perfect for picnics. Yotam Ottolenghi puts  sugar in his dough and seven spices in his chicken filling, and, well, what more could you want? Although it is technically possible to make them completely lean,  Felicity Cloake doesn’t recommend it: the fat contributes to flavour and shelf-life.

Hard Dough Bread

 A  Jamaican speciality, this is a plain-flour yeasted dough, enriched with butter and sugar. It takes a short knead (you want the dough nice and elastic) and a 45-minute rest. You then roll it out flat with a rolling pin and – to give it that moist, dense crumb – roll it right back up again into a tight log, tucking the ends in (DaJen Eat’s Jen and her grandmother Cynthia  will show you how). Then, after a short rest, it is baked golden brown in a loaf pan.

Steamed Bread

 The one loaf you don’t need an oven for. This South African beauty involves mixing a very sticky batter of plain flour, salt, sugar, yeast (no oil) and lukewarm water in a bowl with a wooden spoon. (  Gaylard’s demo is quite possibly the most mesmerising cooking video I’ve ever come across. It’s now my lockdown backdrop.) Cover with a lid to let it rest, then beat it once more and let it rest again. Pour into a buttered bowl and place in a large pot for which you have a lid, with enough boiling water to come halfway up the side of your bowl, adding water when necessary to keep the steam going. It is cooked when, as with a cake, a knife stuck into the centre comes out clean.

Maple Oat Breakfast Bread

This takes a couple more ingredients (maple syrup and rolled oats) and an overnight rest (eight hours or more), but it makes,  as Food52 notes,  darn good toast. Much like in soda bread, the oats impart a welcome  bite. As with the no-knead crusty loaf, you’ll need an oven-safe  heavy-based pot with a lid to achieve consistent, high heat and a good  seal so the moisture doesn’t escape.

Focaccia

Nigel Slater once said that he thought focaccia was the bread to attempt first, before any trad white loaf. “A batch rarely fails.” Now most recipes will ask for strong white bread flour and/or 00 flour (used for making pasta). But  Marcella Hazan makes hers with plain flour, and she’s not someone to mess with. You’ll need a good amount of olive oil (  River Cottage uses 150ml), some flaky salt and something like a baking stone – a heavy cookie sheet will do.

Bagels

 Surprisingly easy to make at home,  as Jennifer Garner demos in episode 15 of her aptly named Pretend Cooking show. Sure, there is the extra step of poaching before you bake, but you can use  plain flour and honey for the dough (or  strong bread flour and malt syrup, if you want to be fancy). Food52’s Kenzi Wilbur says the hardest part is waiting an excruciating 30 minutes once you have removed them from the oven. But I’ve never known anyone able to resist freshly baked anything, so why would you even attempt to do that here? Butter at the ready …

Dale Berning Sawa is a French-South-African freelance writer based in London, covering culture, food, health, tech and work.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/forget-sourdough-how-to-make-10-of-the-world-s-easiest-breads?utm_source=pocket-newtab

#World’s Easiest Breads #Bread

[jenguerrero]

#Lavash @Lavash #AraZada @AraZada #KateLeahy @KateLeahy #JohnLee @JohnLee #ChronicleBooks @ChronicleBooks

I’d eaten store-bought lavash before, but I’d never been to an Armenian restaurant, so I really had no idea what to expect with Lavash. I can tell you now just what a travesty that was! Hauntingly delicious kebabs of fragrantly spiced meat and vegetables in homemade lavash flash baked on my grill. This was the most amazing sandwich. While lavash is served with an awful lot of dishes in the book, the book has a huge variety of Armenian recipes. And they are delicious! And many of the dishes are good for you! I’ll talk about the rest of the book in a minute, but first I want to share the recipe for that glorious grilled bread with you. It has no resemblance to the stuff at the grocery store. None. Zero.

Need that book? I’m an Amazon affiliate. Any time you use one of my links to make a purchase, Amazon gives me a tiny percentage. Thank you! #CommissionEarned

Lavash

Reprinted from Lavash by Ara Zada and Kate Leahy with permission by Chronicle Books, 2019

Lavash

This lavash recipe takes what we learned from Armenia’s master lavash bakers and adapts it to the realities of a modern home kitchen. It makes a forgiving dough that can bend to your schedule: You can make the first step— the old dough—and the final product in about 6 hours, or you can spread the work out over the course of a couple days. The instructions that follow include options for cooking lavash on a wok, cast-iron griddle, or grill. Before starting, review Baking from This Book (page 36) to sort out the heat source that works best for you. The less time the lavash spends cooking, the more pliable it will be. If the lavash griddles up into a crisp cracker, that’s okay too; spritz it with water, cover it in a towel, and it should soften. Griddling the first lavash is like cooking the first pancake in the batch, and you may have to adjust the heat of the cooking surface to prevent parts of it from burning before the rest is cooked. That’s okay; in Armenia, there’s a saying attributed to the poet Paruyr Sevak that the first lavash baked in the fire is like a first love—it’s too hot to last. “Whatever you do, it will fall off the wall of the tonir and burn away,” he wrote. Here we’re hoping to instill a slow-burning, long-lasting kind of lavash love.

Makes eight 13 by 9 in [33 by 23 cm] sheets

OLD DOUGH ½ cup [70 g] all-purpose flour ¼ cup plus a scant 1 Tbsp [70 ml] lukewarm water (see page 38) ¼ tsp instant yeast

DOUGH 1 cup [240 ml] lukewarm water (see page 38) 1 Tbsp sunflower oil or other neutral oil 2 tsp kosher salt 3 cups plus 2 Tbsp [440 g] all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

To make the old dough, using your hands or a rubber spatula, squish together the flour, water, and yeast in a bowl until it forms a thick paste. Scrape the paste into a small, lightly oiled container, cover, and let it sit out for 1½ to 2 hours, or refrigerate overnight and bring to room temperature for at least 2 hours before using. When ready, the ball will have doubled in volume.

To make the dough, in the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the old dough, water, oil, and salt. Squish the old dough with your hands to break it up in the water; it doesn’t have to be perfectly mixed in.

Fit the stand mixer with the paddle attachment and add a third of the flour. Mix on low speed until the dough looks like pancake batter. Add the remaining flour and mix on low speed until incorporated. Remove the paddle attachment, pulling off any dough stuck to it. If there is flour at the base of the bowl, use your hands to press the dough into the flour. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let the dough sit for 20 minutes to allow the flour to hydrate.

(To make by hand, combine the old dough, water, oil, and salt in a large bowl and mix together, squishing the old dough into the water with your hands. Stir in the flour gradually with your fingers until a crumbly dough forms, then knead it a few times in the bowl by folding the dough over itself and pressing it down into the bowl. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let the dough rest for 20 minutes.)

Remove the towel and attach the dough hook to the stand mixer. Mix the dough on medium speed until the dough releases from the sides of the bowl without sticking and feels smooth to the touch, about 4 minutes. Turn the mixer off and reposition the dough to the center of the bowl if it seems to get stuck on one side of the bowl. (To knead by hand, dust the counter lightly with flour and place the dough on top. Begin kneading by stretching and folding the dough over itself until it is smooth to the touch, 5 to 7 minutes.)

Lightly oil an 8 cup [2 L] glass Pyrex or a large glass bowl and place the dough inside. Cover the bowl with a lid, a plate, or plastic wrap, and let it rest for 3 hours or until doubled in volume. Or refrigerate overnight and let the dough come to room temperature for at least 2 hours before portioning.

To portion and shape the dough, dust the counter lightly with flour and place the dough on top. Using a bench scraper or knife, cut the dough into eight pieces about 3.5 oz [100 g] each.

To shape the dough, cup the palm of your hand over one portion at a time and move your hand in a circle. The friction from the counter will help form the dough into a ball. If there is too much flour on the surface and the dough is sliding around, give the counter a spritz of water and try again. Lightly oil a rimmed tray and place the dough on the tray, ensuring that the portions are not touching. Cover with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap lightly coated with oil. Leave out for 1 to 1½ hours, or until puffy, or refrigerate for up to 3 days. If you refrigerate the dough, use plastic wrap to cover it and expect it to take an hour or two to return to room temperature before it is ready to be rolled out.

Dust the counter lightly with flour. Pat a portion of dough into an oval with your fingertips. Using a rolling pin and moving back and forth, roll the dough as thinly as possible into an oval about 13 by 9 in [33 by 23 cm]. If the dough resists stretching, let it relax and start working on another portion before returning to it. You can also gently stretch the dough with your hands to correct the shape. It doesn’t have to look perfect. To griddle the lavash, follow the instructions on the facing page.

  To griddle lavash, choose one of the following options:

OVERTURNED WOK Place a carbon-steel wok upside down over a burner. Have a pair of tongs handy. Heat the wok over high heat for 1 minute or until a sprinkle of water instantly evaporates. Drape the dough over the wok. Cook for 1 minute or until you can lift it easily from the wok with tongs and it has puffed slightly and blistered. Turn the dough over to briefly cook the other side, no more than 30 seconds. For extra browning, flip it over for another 30 seconds. Transfer the lavash to a half-sheet pan and cover with a dry kitchen towel while you cook the rest of the dough. In between batches, turn off the burner. The wok heats up quickly, and it will get too hot if the burner is left on.

CAST-IRON GRIDDLE Place a 20 in [50 cm] cast-iron griddle over two burners. Heat the griddle over medium-high heat for a few minutes or until a sprinkle of water instantly evaporates. Drape the dough over the griddle. Cook for 1 minute or until you can lift the dough eas¬ily with tongs and it has puffed slightly and blistered. Turn the dough over to briefly cook the other side, no more than 30 seconds. For extra browning, flip it over for 30 more seconds. Transfer the lavash to a half-sheet pan and cover with a dry kitchen towel while you cook the rest of the dough. In between batches, keep the griddle turned on, but monitor its heat so it doesn’t get too hot.

GRILL Have tongs, a pastry brush, a small bowl of vegetable oil, and 2 half-sheet pans ready. Coat one of the pans lightly with oil. Heat a gas grill over medium-high heat or prepare a charcoal grill for direct-heat cooking. Ensure that the grill grates are clean. The grill should be hot enough that you can only hold your hand over the grates for 3 to 5 seconds. Place a sheet of dough onto the oiled pan and brush oil on top. Drape the oiled dough over the grill. Cover the grill and cook for 25 seconds. Uncover the grill. Using tongs, turn the lavash over and let it cook for another 25 seconds, uncovered, or until evenly blistered and puffed in parts. Transfer to the clean half-sheet pan and cover with a dry kitchen towel while you cook the rest of the dough.

Eat the lavash soon after making it or store it in plastic bags to keep the bread pliable. It’s okay if it dries out and turns brittle; just rehydrate it by misting the lavash with water and covering it with a towel to let it soften. Soon after, it should be pliable enough to roll up without cracking. If it’s still cracking, mist with more water.

NOTE: To turn leftover lavash into crackers, tear or cut the lavash into chip-size pieces and place them in a single layer on a sheet pan. Brush the pieces with a little oil, sprinkle them with salt, and then toast them at 400ºF [200ºC] until golden brown and crispy, about 6 minutes.

My thoughts and pics of the dishes I tried: 1) My dinner. Lavash, Khorovats, and Khorovats Salad. I’ll go through all the details of the components in a second, but this was an outstanding dinner. It silenced the table with weird outbursts of yummy sounds. You have to get it started in the morning to have it ready for dinner, but it is so worth it. 2) Lavash – p 48. This is delicious! The flavor is terrific, and the dough is lovely to work with. This takes about 6 hours start to finish, but 5 hours are various resting parts. It’s beyond worth the time investment. They give instructions for cooking on the grill, on a griddle or the overturned wok. This makes 8 balls of dough. I used 4 for grilled lavash and saved the other 4 to use the next day in Lahmajo (Armenian pizza) on a baking steel in the oven. 3-4) Khorovats – p 160. Delightful dry-rubbed, grilled meats. I went with beef tenderloin, but they listed so many options. I was using 2 pounds of meat and didn’t want to make enough rub for 20 pounds, so I made 1/10th of the rub recipe. After you grill the meat, it goes into a bowl of thinly sliced onions and tossed, and then a few handfuls of herbs are tossed in. It’s glorious. They give grilled veg suggestions, but I decided to just go with the Khorovats Salad (next) with it. 5-6) Khorovats Salad – p 167. Grilled eggplant and tomato, tossed afterwards with onion, garlic, and herbs. So simple and perfect. I added Anaheim peppers to mine, because that was one of the vegetables suggested with the Khorovats. 7) Lahmajo (Armenian Pizza) – p 64. Fabulously thin crisp crust using 4 of the lavash dough balls. The topping is a glorious spiced meat with some flavor overlap with a great taco filling. It’s dusted with mint after it takes a blast in a piping hot oven on a baking steel (or pizza stone), and then it’s served with lemon. There’s no cheese involved. 8) Green Salad with Radishes – p 98. This was the recommended side dish for the Lahmajo, so we had to try it. Great salad. I usually toss the radish leaves, and they were a lovely addition, with a nice variation visually and of flavor from the romaine. The pomegranate molasses and paprika are subtle, but great background notes. 9) Salat Vinaigrette – p 95. Beets, potatoes, and carrots with onion, dill pickles, beans, and herbs. I would never have put dill pickles in a salad, and they were a fabulous acidic punch that really woke the rest of the salad up. So unusual, and so good! Don’t toss out the beet greens, because those can get used in the next salad. 10) Aveluk Salad – p 100. Beet greens and mustard greens with a nice vinaigrette, onion, garlicky yogurt, walnuts and pomegranate seeds. Nice balance of bitter, tangy, and rich. 11) Meatball soup – p 111. Meatballs studded with rice, onion, and herbs, in an onion, garlic, sweet red pepper, carrot and potato filled broth, with tons of fresh herbs. It makes the kitchen smell heavenly. 12) Summer Salad – p 92. Lovely tomato and cucumber salad with a kiss of spiciness from a mild pepper and fresh zip from herbs.

Some others I have flagged to try: Jingalov Hats (flatbreads filled with greens) – p 58 * Za’atar Hats – p 67 * Matnakash (bread drawn by fingers) – p 68 * Arishta (traditional dried flour noodles) – p 76 * Basturma (cured beef in spices) – p 138 * Urfa Kebab (skewers of eggplant and meatballs) – p 169 * Grape Leaf Tolma – p 171 * Lavash-Wrapped Trout – p 183 * Ghapama (pumpkin stuffed with rice, nuts, dried fruit, and butter) – p 186 * Panrkhash (lavash and cheese bake) – p 201 * and lots of desserts to tempt you…

*I received a copy to explore and share my thoughts.

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Lavash

Lavash recipe and cookbook review: Lavash by Ara Zada and Kate Leahy #Lavash @Lavash #AraZada @AraZada #KateLeahy @KateLeahy #JohnLee @JohnLee #ChronicleBooks @ChronicleBooks I'd eaten store-bought lavash before, but I'd never been to an Armenian restaurant, so I really had no idea what to expect with…

#Ara Zada #Armenian #beef #bread #cook book #cookbook #delicious #dinner #grill #grilling #healthy #Jennifer Guerrero #JenniferGuerrero #John Lee #Kate Leahy #kebabs #Khorovats #lavash #produce #recipe #review #veggies #yummy