Flatbreads

The last week and the week before and several weeks preceding those we baked several kinds of breads and rolls and cakes. The epitome was sandwich rolls which I made last weekend and had with my special enoki 'fried chicken sandwich'.

And so we decided we'd had enough of home-made bread. Got two rolls of bread from the grocery store when SB got them delivered from Wegmans. Both have remained untouched.

And that's because we've been making a lot of flatbreads this week. Not necessarily roti, or one even, but similar ones. The first time, we attempted to make rotis that ended up like papad: crispy. After leaving them out uneaten for two days, I fried them up in hot oil, added salt and tajin, and garnished with mexican cheese. A solid 'nachos'! If I were to do it again, and that's quite likely, I'd cut the rotis to a consistent size and not just crumple them because the small pieces just burned away while the larger ones were not perfectly crispy yet.

A couple of days after that, we (re)made black-lentil pancakes (maas ko baara). The first attempt PL had tried, but he failed due to overcooking. I took the temperature down and added eggs at the very end, and what we had approached what I imagine to be authentic baara, even though I have no memory of having had baaraa myself.

This morning I made crepes with pancake batter. Twice as much as the recommended water, lot of milk (so the batter browns), to make the batter really really thin. To make it look nice, spread the batter around in the pan in circular pattern inside out, so there's nice circular burn lines on the crepe. Or you could just slosh the batter around, at the lowest heat but they look less fun. I still need to perfect the consistency, but ohh man that was one of the better discoveries. Heat on super duper low.

This evening we made something very similar to pita bread without intending to. Since our attempt at roti making at failed due to them not puffing up, we added yeast to our flour and made our dough pancakes quite thick. The result was a chewy texture that was not exactly like roti -- more similar to pita really, but not puffed up enough for pita. It was good, and I've gotten better at flattening them and spreading them out into generally circular shape. The next time, I'm going to be making real pita for sure. Also, the first one I made may have been actually pita.