No Yeast Flatbread - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between unleavened bread and flatbread? ›

Any bread that is spongy and you can cut into slices is leavened. And pizza bases are normally made with yeast even though they're rolled out flat. Unleavened bread, of course, doesn't rise and it'll be flat. So that'll be any kind of flatbread.

Traditional Flatbread

Traditionally, flatbread is basically unleavened bread, which is made without yeast. Flour, water, and salt are the main ingredients. It's rolled out flat and cooked, usually in a brick oven.

Over-kneading has a tendency to result in chewy bread. Here's how to tell if you've kneaded enough. Another possibility—you used bread flour when all-purpose flour would do. If a recipe with bread flour turned out chewier than you like, try it with all-purpose and knead only as much as the recipe directs.

Bannock – Unleavened bread originating in Ireland and the British Isles. Bataw – Unleavened bread made of barley, corn, or wheat, traditional in Egypt. Fritos and similar corn chips – technically a type of unleavened bread, though not commonly thought of as such, Fritos are a popular snack in the United States.

matzo, unleavened bread eaten by Jews during the holiday of Passover (Pesaḥ) in commemoration of their Exodus from Egypt. The rapid departure from Egypt did not allow for the fermentation of dough, and thus the use of leavening of any kind is proscribed throughout the week-long holiday.

Flat breads are made throughout most of the world. Examples are pita (from the Middle East), chapati and naan (India), tortilla (Mexico) and focaccia (Italy).

Irish soda bread never uses yeast. It gets it's name, and the ability to rise, from baking soda!

Homemade Flatbread {Greek Pocketless Pitas}

In a large bowl (or bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the dough hook), mix the yeast, sugar water, milk, oil, salt and one cup of the flour until well combined. Gradually add the remaining flour until a soft dough is formed.

Over-kneaded dough can become very hard to work with and produce a more flat and chewy bread. It's vital to stop mixing at the first signs of over-kneading, as a fully over-kneaded dough cannot be fixed.

When baking pita bread, he has struggled to get them to puff, and wondered what was going wrong. A host of factors can make perfectly puffed pitas difficult to pull off. If the round of dough is too thick, the dough is too dry or the oven temperature is too low, pita breads will struggle to puff.

Why do you have to rest flatbread dough? ›

While you can make flatbread without letting the dough rest, 30 minutes or more will make the dough more elastic. To have any chance of a pocket on a bread with no leavening, you need to stretch and fold the dough before forming the final balls that you roll out.

While tortillas are relatively new to some, the flat, unleavened-breadlike rounds predate the arrival of the conquistadors in the 1520s – examples of tortillas date to the early Aztecs.

This is really a modernization of what would have been a dense, unleavened barley cake in Ezekiel's time... but it's a hearty, flavorful multigrain bread. The combination of cereal grains and legumes (lentils in this case)supplies all the essential amino acids so that you could get all your protein from this alone.

Crackers can be naturally leavened with yeast, like Armenian lavash, chemically leavened with baking powder or baking soda like many commercial cracker products, or totally unleavened, like matzo or Triscuits.

A flatbread is bread made usually with flour; water, milk, yogurt, or other liquid; and salt, and then thoroughly rolled into flattened dough. Many flatbreads are unleavened, although some are leavened, such as pita bread.

Unleavened breads, on the other hand, do not contain any yeast. The dough is not allowed to rise, so the breads are flatter and less flavorful than leavened breads. Matzo is a type of unleavened bread that is traditionally eaten during Passover. Lavash is a type of flatbread that is popular in the Middle East.

Naan is a leavened bread (meaning it uses yeast), while roti is an unleavened bread (meaning it doesn't). The different ingredients give a far different texture: naan is soft and chewy, while roti is dense and thin.

While different doughs vary nutritionally, flatbread is generally just unleavened bread. In other words, bread dough that was not made to rise. Flatbreads may look smaller, but if it's the same dough, the nutritional contents are identical.