Herbed Grilled Flatbread, for easy reference

Hey All,

So way back when, when I was young and ambitious, I used to read just about every periodical I could get my hands on regarding herbs, herbalism, aromatherapy, and all my other favorite complimentary therapies.

Among those, was a really simple recipe for Herbed Grilled Flatbread (The Herb Quarterly, Summer 2006, with my adaptations). It looks complicated, but trust me, I have yet to screw it up, so it can't be even remotely hard. So here we go:

1 package (which is 1 1/2 tsp from the jar) yeast
3/4 cup warm (I get the yeast where you can be quite hot...I prefer a hot to the touch water as the yeast perk up quicker and produce more yeasty flavors)
1 tsp sugar
2 cups flour
1 Tblsp fresh herbs. You can do it with dry, but cut that down to 1tsp then. Conventional wisdom is 1/3 the amount of dry herbs when a recipe calls for fresh.
1/4 tsp fennel seeds, lightly ground. You can skip the fennel seed, but I contend it makes this stuff taste the way it should.
3/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp (or a couple good cranks of your grinder) Black Pepper
1/4 cup olive oil, plus oil for brushing. USE OLIVE OIL! I've tried substituting other oils and it just doesn't taste right.

Activate the yeast by mixing the yeast, water, and sugar in a small dish.

Mix the flour, herbs, and salt together. Add the olive oil and mix. Then add the active yeast, bring the dough together and knead until smooth and elastic. Um, I'm not sure how else to describe this. If you've ever made good bread, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Its one of those you just know with experience. So if in doubt, you can overknead this recipe and it will be fine.

Coat the dough and let it rise for at least 1.5 hours until it doubles. Then divide the dough in half, and each of those halves into 3 pieces, so you have a total of 6. Roll these to 1/4" thick, coat with oil and grill on a low flame (or on the edges of the grill where it isn't so intensely hot), about 5-7 minutes per side. The big thing is don't burn them...

And Viola! Serve them warm, or if you must, wrap them up in foil or plastic wrap to keep them pliable.

One of my favorite things to do with this is a pita type affair with ground beef that has been seasoned beyond recognition with Mediterranean herbs, cucumber yogurt dill sauce, and salted/sugared onions.

Today, I'll be adding a bit of lavender (white grosso, so the flavor is quite subtle) to the bread and making my lavender-apple chicken. The chicken was this thing I made one evening in Wyoming when I wasn't sure what to do, so I let fancy be my muse. I think I talked about it in the post before this one. If you need a more formal recipe, be sure to comment or get hold of me and I'll provide some better guidance. On this one, we'll be doing caramelized onion with a sprinkle of bacon...YUM!