Puffy Flat Breads

I wanted some lunch. I had some left over home made soup.

But that meant I wanted some bread. Oh dear. No bread yet, the sponge was still setting.

I looked at the sponge, sitting there all fluffy and bubbly. I looked at the frying pan sitting there all black and empty.

I wondered….. would it work?

……….

10 minutes later I was sitting down to lunch.

It was so easy! how had I never made flatbreads before?

The sponge I am talking about is the way I start my breads off these days.  I mix 250g bread flour, wholewheat or white, and add 1 tsp instant yeast and 250 g of blood heat milk (scalded and then allowed to cool) I mix, cover and allow to ferment until full of bubbles and spongy. This would usually then be added to more flour, salt, butter and milk to make bread dough  (the full recipe and lots of other tips are here).

I filched a good couple of tablespoons of sponge, and added two more tablespoons of flour, a little more water, salt, a squirt of olive oil, and mixed and kneaded lightly to a soft dough. I split this into small balls about the size of a golf ball and let them rest for 5 minutes covered in cling film.  Then patted them out flat using my palms rather than a rolling pin.

I heated the frying pan, dry, no oil or butter, until smoking slightly and dropped the breads in one by one. And decided to treat you to a little video of them puffing up like mini naan breads. I am a useless video recorder and ask you to forgive the bits on the cooker which I should have polished before making these…

I chopped out a bit in the middle where the video went rather strange cos I nearly dropped the camera, so there are two little videos.  And I don’t know what happened with the sound so please turn it off as I didn’t say anything!!!

Here we are:

Video 1: puffing up

and Video 2: nice and brown

About 1 minute each one!! After I had cooked them on the frying pan,  I popped each one for a few seconds onto a naked flame until there was a nice little bit of char.

No butter needed, they were delicious, just like mini naan breads from the tandoor!

I made the rest of the sponge into rolls for dinner, but I wish I had just made more flat breads now.

If you make them, so let me know what you think, I’d love to hear.