- [Babish] This episode is
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if I do say so myself. Get 10% off your first Squarespace order by visiting squarespace.com/babish. (upbeat music) So what's cool about flatbread is it gives us the opportunity to explore the three most common means
of leavening for bread. First up, the lack thereof
or unleavened bread and essential combination
of flour and water that has sustained humanity
for thousands of years. This particular preparation in combination you may recognize from Indian
cuisine as roti or chapati. We're combining 260 grams
of whole wheat flour and 70% of that flour is weight
in hot water or 182 grams to the bowl of a food processor, where we're gonna blitz
it for about two minutes. If you've seen my episode on pizza dough, you know that the food processor
is an excellent vehicle for gluten development, the building and
strengthening of the network of strands of gluten in your dough. To see if your gluten is developed enough, you wanna grab a little piece and see if you can
stretch it out thin enough so that light passes through it, otherwise known as the window pane test. If it tears too easily
or if it's too sticky, you can process it further
or knead it by hand until it's smooth and elastic and supple and can stretch thin without breaking. If it's way too sticky,
this is also an opportunity to work more flour into your dough. Once it's smooth, soft and bouncy, you can either wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes
to allow the gluten to relax to make it easier to roll out or you can go straight into
rolling it out right away. I'm gonna grab a 50 gram or a
golf ball sized ball of dough, I'm gonna roll it out as
thin as I can possibly get it and pass it back and forth
between my hands to knock off any excess flour and then
bring it over to the stove top where I've got a cast iron pan preheated over medium high flame to a surface temp of
475 degrees Fahrenheit or just lightly smoking. Pop in our roti and let it sit for about 60 seconds undisturbed. During this time, it should just begin
to beautifully bubble. Take a peak and once it starts picking up a little bit of color, we're gonna flip it over, letting it cook for no
more than 15 to 30 seconds during which time it's gonna
start to really bubble up because you see, even unleavened bread is still technically
leavened or a leavener, in this case being plain old water. Once done cooking on the second side, we're taking the pan off the flame and placing the bread
directly on the flame. And this is where the real magic starts. Watch in awe as the water
evaporates into steam and fills up the bread like a balloon, sort of defining the term
flatbread, if you ask me. We're cooking it for less
than five seconds per side before taking it off the heat and keeping all our warm
roti in a clean dish towel. Serve hot with a little
melted ghee and garlic and use leftovers to make things like mini frozen breakfast burritos. Stuff with low fat
ingredients of your choosing, roll it up and you've got
yourself a fast, easy, healthy breakfast, if you don't eat them all before they make it to the freezer. For our next style of leavening, we're gonna take a look at pita bread, which is leavened using yeast. We're starting by combining
120 grams of bread flour with eight grams of instant yeast. And we're adding 225 grams of tepid water around a hundred degrees
Fahrenheit, mix it all together, cover it and let it rest until
foaming about 15 minutes. This is called a pre-ferment and not only does it make
the dough more workable, it improves oven spring something
very important with pita. Once that's done, we're
adding another 240 grams of bread flour, 20 grams olive oil and six grams of Kosher salt then kneading together
using your favorite method about two minutes in a food processor, six to eight minutes in a
stand mixer on medium speed and anywhere from 10
to 30 minutes by hand, depending on your forearm
strength and general gumption. No matter how you knead it together, we just want it to pass
the window pane test. We need a strong network of gluten not only for great texture but so our pita can
blow up like a balloon. Once you got it where you want it, we're gonna roll it into a nice tight ball and place it into a lightly oiled bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise at room temperature for one to two hours until it's about doubled in size. This is called the first
rise or bulk fermentation and it develops the dough
and improves the flavor and texture of our final bread. I got 600 grams worth of dough here, so I'm gonna divide it
into 100 gram pieces to make six pita. We can just eyeball it, you just want your pieces to
be generally the same size. Then we're gonna roll
them against the table pinching their edges so that
they form a smooth top top kind of like pizza dough, the rounder you make
these dough balls now, the higher chance you'll end
up with a perfectly round pita. Arrange these with plenty
of space between them on a sheet of parchment paper set in a rimmed baking sheet, cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rest at room
temperature for about 20 minutes or up to an hour if you
really wanna improve your doughs flavor and texture plus make it way easier to roll out. Just like last time on a
very well floured countertop, we're rolling this guy out
to maybe a six inch round, a French rolling pin
like this one is great because it gives you leverage and control over which parts of the
dough you're rolling out. Make sure you get rid of excess flour by either patting it back and forth or using the pixie dust method. And there you have it, this
pita is ready to get cooked and there are a few different ways that you can accomplish this. Probably the easiest
way is on a pizza stone set in a 500 degree Fahrenheit oven you've preheated for one hour. Pita bread is a lot like pizza dough. You wanna hit it with
as much heat as possible as quickly as possible so that it blows up like a balloon, cooks all the way through and picks up some nice
browning along the way. Give it a flip after
about a minute and a half and let it cook for maybe
another minute and a half before removing and keeping
warm in a clean kitchen towel. The need for high heat also
makes the cast iron skillet a worthy contender but the one sidedness of this heat can cause a rather uneven
pocket to form very thin on one side and thick on the other. Don't get me wrong, it's
still gonna be way better than store-bought but it might be harder to make a sandwich out of. Due to its similarity to pizza, it stands to reason that the ultimate pita could be made in the ultimate pizza oven. Get this guy preheated to
about 666 degrees Fahrenheit mark of the beast, plop it in
the center and watch it grow. Pizza ovens offer the perfect balance of conductive, convective
and radiative heat transfer that makes perfect pita pretty darn easy. It rises perfectly and
evenly browns quickly and is done in about 60 seconds. And especially if you're
using using wood-fire, there really is nothing
quite like fresh hot pita you've made yourself. Store-bought pita tastes
stale and flavorless and almost poisonous by comparison. You can use one of these halves to make the low carb
sandwich of your choice but the classic remains
freshly fried falafel. That's hard to say freshly fried falafel and all the fixings. There we go, I did it. Next and last, we're gonna take a look at chemical leavening. In this case, a simple yogurt flatbread courtesy of Bigger Bolder Baking. We've got 360 grams of all purpose flour, 10 grams of baking powder and
three grams of Kosher salt that we're gonna tiny whisk
together until homogenous. And then we got 440 grams of
whole milk Greek style yogurt. Add that to the dry stuff and it's the same story as before, knead it out until it's smooth, supple and passes the window pane test. The gluten development in
this case is more for texture than function. Our bread is not gonna
blow up like a balloon but the better we develop the gluten, the nicer chew our bread will have. Same deal, 50 gram golf ball sized ball that we're gonna roll out about as thin as we can possibly get it
between six to eight inches wide, a perfectly respectable circle size but this time, because of all
the beautiful milk proteins present in the dough, we're gonna fry it in
butter oil or ideally ghee. Get that ripping hot in a cast
iron or carbon steel skillet, drop it in round and fry it on
one side for about 60 seconds or until it is beautifully
bubbly, browned and burnished like this. Another 30 to 60 seconds on the other side and you've got yourself
the absolute best wrap you've ever had in your entire life. Or if you're feeling cheeky and you feel like using that pizza oven you got fired up in the backyard, you can make yourself a nice
little quick flatbread pizza. I'm just loading it up
with my favorite toppings chicken, pesto, Mozz, Parmesan and in your home oven
or in your pizza oven heat it to about 500 degrees Fahrenheit, we're dropping it on the
stone, closing her up and letting her get all melty and crisp. And before you know, you've
got yourself a quick and easy quote, unquote pizza, especially quick and easy when
you consider that all three of these breads well, best enjoyed fresh. Freeze and reheat beautifully and easily. Have myriad applications
and taste way better than their store book counterparts. Hope you guys try it for
yourself and hope you enjoy. Thanks again to Squarespace
for sponsoring today's episode. They've been a great partner in supporting the Babish culinary universe and bringing my websites to life. From websites to online stores,
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Anyone else get the feel Floyd Cardoz would be proud?
I'm Indian and I loved the roti bit. A lot of Indian people who start out cooking are afraid to make rotis and instead make rice because it is easier. But a "test" of an Indian home cook is whether they have atleast made some rotis which have ballooned up like the one Babish made.
TIL pita inflates like a balloon
These look great! I've always loved flatbread, naan especially.
And ohmygosh, true dream kitchen goals is owning even just ONE of his line 🤩🤩
So, usually Babish is pretty good about making recipes accessible, sticking to basic kitchen tools, etc.
But I don't have a gas stove, just a fan oven with an induction cook top. Can I make roti in an oven when I don't have an open flame to throw it on?
That first one, *cries in electronic hob*
I take it that yoiu can't do the technique at 2:15 if you don't have a gas burner stove. I've never been super happy with my electric stove.
Sooooo….that’s what the new Ooni multi fuel Karu looks like. Digital deck thermometer? See through door? I like it.
Anyone find a link to the recipe?