Whole Wheat Flat Bread

I’ve been playing around with my flat bread recipe. The main reason for my experimentation is a new toy at my house. I have a Wonder Mill now and its the best. Just look at the whole grains and the newly ground flour.

Whole wheat berries and freshly ground whole wheat flour

I like my old flat bread recipe because it is a batter and easily poured and fried. It also allows me to use several different types of whole grains. I guess I could use them in this recipe, but I just used hard red whole wheat.

The old recipe was great with soups and stews, or with spreads. And that’s the only problem with the old recipe; it was too firm and didn’t make good sandwiches or wraps.

This recipe however, is soft and bendable and makes lovely sandwiches and wraps. Because it contains yeast, this recipe takes about an hour to rise and be ready to cook. If you prefer, you can use a good sourdough starter in place of the yeast to make a delicious flat bread.

A very tasty add-in to this bread are fresh herbs. You can use chopped basil, parsley, thyme or any other herb your family likes.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup butter

1 cup yogurt or dairy kefir or milk, warmed to about 105*F. I used homemade Greek style yogurt

2 teaspoons yeast, about 1 foil packet

1/4 cup warm water

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup milk

1 egg

4 cups white whole wheat flour

If you use kefir for this bread, you can leave out the yeast and allow the dough to rise for several hours using just the kefir. However, you can use both kefir and yeast and it will rise faster. The milk products and egg are what makes this bread so soft.

You don’t have to warm the dairy products, it just helps the yeast rise more quickly.

Ingredients for Whole Wheat Flat Bread

In a cup, add the warm water, yeast and sugar. Allow to foam.

In a large mixing bowl combine the honey, butter and yogurt/kefir/milk and salt. Mix til well combined.

Add the egg to the yogurt mixture, mix well.

Add 1 cup flour to the yogurt mixture, mix well. You will have a paste at this point.

Add the yeast mixture and the rest of the flour.

If you are using chopped fresh herbs, add them at this point.

Mix well and if needed, add the 1/4 cup milk at this point. You want a smooth dough.

Thoroughly mixed and kneaded dough, coming away from sides of the bowl

Mix until a dough forms. Knead the dough vigorously for 6 minutes or until the dough makes a ball and comes away from the sides of the bowl. Place dough in a greased pan, turn the dough over to grease the top. Cover with a clean towel and let rise til doubled, about 1 hour.

Tip for faster rising:Preheat your oven to 500*F. Turn the oven off, place the bowl with greased dough in the oven. Leave the oven door ajar and allow the dough to rise til doubled.

Place the dough in a greased pan and cover with a clean towel to rise

When the dough has risen, turn it out on a clean surface and divide the dough into 12-16 equally sized pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Here is a short video showing you how to make rolls easily. You can use this method with any dough.

Here’s an easy way to make nice, round rolls from bits of dough. You can use this method to make rolls to bake or balls of dough to roll out and make flat bread.

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Roll out the dough balls into circles, as thin or thick as you like

Using a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a circle, about 6 inches in diameter.

Place the dough rounds in the hot skillet

Heat a heavy cast iron skillet to very hot, but not smoking. Do NOT grease the skillet.
Cook each round of dough about 25 seconds on each side. Adjust your heat if needed to keep from burning.
Place on a metal rack to cool, then you can stack them up, wrap and freeze or use right away.

The finished flatbread!

We’ve been using these for chicken roll ups, hummus and more! They are tasty and very soft. They freeze well if you freeze the dough balls after you form them. Freeze the balls on a cookie sheet. Then when they are frozen solid, put them in a zip top container and put back the the freezer. To use them, take out how ever many you want and allow them to defrost. This will take about 3-5 hours at room temperature so plan ahead. After they are defrosted, roll them out and proceed as directed above.