Flatbreads, and other tales..

Hi all,

Been reading for a while, and have found all your recipes and ideas super inspiring and helpful, thank you! So I thought I'd share some of the recipes that have worked for me...

Asking forgiveness in advance for the GIANT WALL OF TEXT AND PICTURES, hope this is okay.

Context: I've been low carb for quite a while, and sad about all the lovely foods I can't have. Then - fiberflour came along, and now.. I can :) So I've been trying everything I can think of.

Note: I use the ultra fine for everything; the regular fiberflour is great but a bit too "real" for me. I like the flavour ok, but it drowns out anything else.

~Successes!~:

Yeasted:

Pizza - thin crust; can't get the pan variety to puff up properly

(Trying to add pictures, the forum software is fighting me. Sorry if this comes out all wonky.)

Bread - freeform. Quite dense, but it's awesome for toast

Burger buns - lighter, but still pretty dense. Definitely not fluffy :)

Unyeasted:

Pita breads - a little dense but properly chewy/crisp on toasting, and strong enough to dip in eg hummus. Reliable pockets.

Yoghurt flatbreads - tender and delicious, fantastic with curry or for foldover sandwiches.

Tortillas - SO TASTY and 100x better than bought. You wouldn't know they're "unusual". My staple!

Pasties - a fairly unusual kneaded suet dough, very tasty, very sturdy.

Dumpling wrappers (eg for potstickers) - dead easy, but making dumplings is a bit of a faff. Fortunately they freeze well so 1 day of faff = many future meals.

Sweet:

Brownies - fudgy!

Pound cake - moist and buttery, quite heavy

Chocolate cake - somehow both light and rich

Scone-rock-cake things - ugly, but tasty! Also in savoury versions like cheese & bacon.. (pictured)

~Not so successful~:

Cookies - I think this is partially the fault of the sugar substitute but they come out cakey, every time. They taste great, but the texture isn't right, and there's zero crispness ever. Same with shortbread.

Puff pastry - following the excellent recipe here. Super tasty, but very, very heavy - possibly I folded it too many times!

Crumpets - ugh - total fail, simply did not cook in the middle at all. Alas.

The yeasted items are always a work in progress - I switched brands of yeast (because lockdown shortage - took what I could get) and omg everything went haywire :) Still trying to recover from that!

I've done pizza dough a bunch of different ways, and honestly there's not a lot of difference in the finished article, although the overnight/fridge "fermented" ones are marginally tastier. (And easier! LOL)

They all make perfectly adequate pizza.

Happy to share recipes for anything you like but the things I make all the time, and love the best, are the flatbreads. So here are the recipes for those.

Tortillas:

300g ultra fine fiberflour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

50g suet (any hard fat, in theory; butter, I guess? shortening? lard? I like suet though, it does good things to the dough.)

250ml hot water (~60C is good - hot! to the fingertip, but not OWIE HOT hot)

Put the flour, salt & baking powder in a bowl.

Melt the suet (nuke for a minute or two, then add a little of the hot water & stir it - doesn't have to be totally melted, it's kind of gross & goopy to be honest)

Dump the suet & water into the dry ingredients & mix with a metal spoon (or utensil of your choice) - stir & cut in - until it's a shaggy mostly-mixed mess with a little free flour.

Then get your hand in and scrunch together, turning and folding, to pick up all the stray flour & turn it into a ball of dough.

It'll be a tiny bit sticky, only a little - just persevere, the stickiness totally goes away as you knead.

Turn out on to a surface and knead it for a few minutes. It should be a lovely soft friendly pliable dough. Give it a hard time.

When it starts to toughen up a little bit and resist you more, make a ball and wrap in clingfilm.

Leave it to rest for a while. I usually leave it minimum an hour, but it'll be happy most of the day if necessary.

About half an hour before you want to make the tortillas, unwrap the dough and divide it into equal bits. I usually do 10 lumps of 60g-ish.

Not sure it's necessary but I usually shape each little ball, in my hands - hard to describe, but I kind of stretch it across the top and pinch together underneath to give it some tension.

Then flatten a little, sit them on clingfilm with some over the top, leave to rest for 20 - 30m, although longer is okay.

To cook -

Roll out each tortilla, flouring as necessary, to as thin as you can. A 60g ball will go to about a 20cm disk(? or wobbly shape). About 2p coin thickness.

If you hold it up to light, you should clearly see your finger shapes behind it.

The dough shouldn't sproing back *too* badly, if it fights you too much then let it rest a bit longer.

Heat a frying pan or other flat cooking vessel that'll accommodate the size of tortilla you made. No oil or anything.

When it's proper hot, plap in a tortilla. About 1 min per side. No need to fiddle with them.

They will bubble. Mine always puff up all the way like pillows, it's fine, they'll steam themselves cooked inside.

Try not to let them scorch too badly - fiddle with the heat, I generally turn the heat down a little after the first tortilla, but it does need to be hot & cook them rapidly. (Too slow = they can go kind of tough & hard.)

A few dark spots is fine. My pillows generally have a big dark spot underneath. Actual burning with smoke = BAD turn it down! :)

As each is done, fold them into a (clean!) tea towel - just flip back the towel to add the newest to the stack, then re-cover. They'll flatten down as they cool.

They lose a few cm in the cooking, mine generally end up around 16-17cm or so.

When cool pop in a ziplock, they'll last several days - a few days longer in the fridge. Or you can freeze them.

They should be flexible and sturdy - nuke for a few seconds if you need extra flexibility.

Awesome for all tortilla uses - burritos, quesadillas, wraps, etc.

Note: I usually start cooking mine when I have about four or five rolled out, and continue rolling as the tortillas cook, for a production line. You can roll them all out beforehand if you want though.

Yoghurt flatbreads:

1 cup of thick (greek style) plain yoghurt

1 cup of ultra fine fiberflour

1 tsp of baking powder per ~1 cup of flour.

The secret to these is the volume ratio - doesn't matter what container you use, I usually use a cup measure but as long as the *volume* of yoghurt & flour are 1:1 you're good.

(Eg - regular size pot of yoghurt into a bowl; refill the pot (to level where yoghurt was) with flour & scrape into bowl; 1/2 tsp baking powder - works)

Stick everything in a bowl and mix to a dough.

Knead together - this will start out horribly sticky but I swear to you, persist, it will come good.

Dust with flour if you have to, if desperately gooey, but the dough will gradually take in the moisture and it will turn into a workable dough.

Then proceed basically as for tortillas.

Wrap the dough in clingfilm, let it rest. (Long rest).

Divide into chunks, roll into balls, flatten slightly, back into clingfilm & rest again. (Short rest.)

Roll out thin - not as thin as tortillas, these should be about pound coin thickness.

Medium heat dry frying pan - cook for about 1.5 mins per side.

These will also bubble and puff. Pillow is fine, as before. No need to fiddle with them.

Stack in a teatowel, let cool, pop in a ziplock.

These do not taste of yoghurt! They are much more tender than the tortillas, soft and foldable for sandwichy uses, and astonishingly good folded over cheese, brushed with ghee & fried.

Pita bread:

... is basically your favourite bread dough recipe, made in the usual way. I let my bread machine do the hard work, cos I get knackered kneading, but you should do whatever works for you :)

Note: My bread dough recipe is imperfect!! and needs more work to make a better loaf, but essentially I use about 80% water to flour, 3-4% yeast, and a bit of extra gluten.

(Usually: 240g flour, 10g gluten, 200ml water, 2 tsp yeast, 1/2 tsp salt.)

(I'll probably post a question about this :) Can't figure out what's causing my current loaf issues.)

This mix works fine for pitas though. Or, whatever you normally use.

So - mix, knead, and let rise. Then punch down. All as usual.

Then instead of shape & prove, proceed as for the flatbreads above.

Divide into balls, roll out, dry fry in a medium/hot frying pan. (You CAN plap them on to a volcano heat pizza stone/thick baking tray in the oven, but it's too much faff for me, the pan works great.)

About 2 mins a side for these because you cannot get them as thin as the breads above, the dough is more fighty; they have more bulk and structure to cook through. They shrink more, and end up thicker.

These almost always do the puff-pillow thing too - there's your pita pocket - fair warning though, the pockets do sometimes stick back together as the pitas cool.

Still, there are no guarantees for any pita, commercial or homemade :)

I like these for hummus as they are stronger than the yoghurt flatbreads, you can stuff the pockets (cautiously!), or use as little pizza bases :)

They toast well!

Sorry for the giant post :)

All the best!