Friday, January 30, 2009

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Super simple no rise flatbread

I got this recipe out of Healthy Cooking magazine and they got it from a cookbook called Douglas Rodriguez's Latin Flavors on the Grill. I've made it several times now so I'm pretty confident sharing it with you all. Most recently I made a rosemary garlic version of this flatbread and here's how I did it:
First I minced up some rosemary and three cloves of garlic. Next I put one tablespoon of honey, one tablespoon of dry active yeast, and two cups of warm water in a bowl and I mixed them together and let it all sit for ten minutes. The mixture should foam up a bit but if it doesn't, don't worry because it's flabread and it doesn't rise anyway.
This bread can be made on the grill outdoors but since it's winter here I made it on the stove using the cast iron grill fry pan Sparky got me for Christmas a couple of years ago. If you make this on your stove then this step is crucial, while your yeast mixture is foaming, put your pan on to get it nice and hot. You want it really hot before you lay your first piece of bread in the pan. After the yeast mixture sat for ten minutes I added to it three and a half cups of flour, a teaspoon and a half of salt, and the rosemary and garlic. I mixed it all together adding a half a cup of flour a little at a time until it was a nice big ball like in the photo above.
Next I tore off little portions of it, they were a little bit bigger than a golf ball and I patted them out on a floured cutting board.
When they were flat enough I brushed one side of the dough with extra virgin olive oil.Then I put them in my hot pan olive oil side down. ThenI brushed the top of the bread with a little oilve oil and I let it cook about three or four minutes on each side. If you make this you'll get a good feel for when you should turn each piece. Repeat the last few steps until all your dough is gone. Here's what my latest batch of flatbread looked like:It's perfectly fine to get parts of it charred or blackened like I did to mine. In fact you want a little color on both sides. If you make this bread be prepared to get a little messy, you'll have to flour your hands and whatever surface you pat your bread out on several times because the dough is sticky. From start to finish this batch took me about 30 minutes so as you can tell it's super quick and super easy to make. And it's mighty tasty too.

13 comments:

themom said...

Wow...I can visualize you washing your hands constantly - to get all that dough off...just to take the lovely pictures. Looks scrumptious!

Anonymous said...

So no kneading at all? It looks great and I'm going to try it. Maybe even today.

Mnmom said...

Ooooh yummy! I could LIVE on stuff like that. I will definitely try that this weekend.

I made a wonderful beef curry two days ago, but the camera battery was dead, so no Happy Iowa cooking to share this week.

Wandering Coyote said...

How excellent! I just got one of those cast iron pans for Xmas, too. I'm going to bookmark this so I can try it one of these days!

Bon Don said...

Ooooo I LOVE flat bread :)

thanks for the recipe!

barbie2be said...

oh, this looks yum yummy!

Dean Wormer said...

MMMM. Flat bread.

Sminthia said...

We make something very similar, which we call grill bread, except we mix the rosemary and garlic with the oil, spreading it on just before we grill it and then sprinkling with a little kosher salt.

It's wonderful spread with a little goat cheese, some roasted red pepper, and a fresh basil leaf.

Tastes like summer.

Travelingman Rick said...

I love the idea of home made bread. I have never been one to bake bread though but I think I could pull this one off. Thanks for the inspiration.

Anonymous said...

Just sent the recipe to my brother. I'm thinking we may have to try it out next time I'm down for a visit. Thanks, Dr. Monkey.

GETkristiLOVE said...

Oh, thanks so much for this Dr. Monkey! I just got a stand mixer and have been experimenting. I tried flat bread the other night but didn't add honey and I let the dough rise... duh. I didn't really do any research but I had the part right about the grill fry pan and brushing it with olive oil. I tried to push garlic into the dough too - like naan, but it all fell off into the pan.

Anyway, I will try again and use your recipe.

Nan said...

Finally got around to trying this. I think it's going to take some practice to perfect the stovetop technique. The good news is I now know for sure our smoke detector works.

lisahgolden said...

Here it is because you LINKED it! Thanks!