Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophes, where one man…look, he’s doing his best, alright? I’m your Pitiable Presiding Punchinello, Jon O’Guin and today’s recipe is, like the last couple weeks’, very simple. Interestingly, it’s also one I’ve been considering how to do for some time. If you’ve little interest in how both of those can be true, click this link to get to the recipe. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

A Brief Blergh and British Brunch

Before I get too deeply into this, I’d like to thank you all for continuing to read the site, and sticking with me despite the erratic update schedule we’ve had, and I’m sure WILL have. As I’ve said before, I really overbooked myself this month, and I’ve had a very frustrating couple of weeks with a bunch of minor hiccups really throwing off my ‘groove’, as it were. Stuff like “as I opened the shop, I bent over to pick up something and tore a hole right in the crotch of my jeans”, “My pockets are full of crumbs because the prop roll I brought home for the chickens to eat dried out overnight and crumbled” and *deep breath* “I didn’t realize there wasn’t a Men’s Wearhouse in central Washington, so I had to frantically call one in Lynnwood to see if I could get fitted in time for my brother’s wedding, and, when they assured me I had a few days, decided it was best practices to go to their store for the fitting, a move that theoretically only added about 20 minutes to my drive home…until I got stuck in holiday traffic for over an hour and a half”.  You know, stuff like that.

My only solace was that I was able to try a Katsu burger because of it: my verdict is they’re pretty good, but they do not travel well. I tried to eat half at the location, then finish at home, and by the time I got home, it was a REAL mess.

Just today (Sunday), as I drove to Leavenworth, I almost ran out of gas because I got distracted by the podcast I was listening to, missed my exit, and had to drive an extra 30ish miles, and watched as my “60 miles to empty” gas estimate drained by 2-3 miles per MILE over the 40 minute stretch with no cell service. Very ‘exciting’. (I rolled up to the gas station with supposedly 10 miles left in the tank, and that is due in part to me literally coasting for 2-3 miles while coming down the pass.)

On the plus side, the show opened to strong reception, and I’m feeling much better right now, so here’s hoping this is the start of the upswing!

Now, today’s recipe has interested me for a while, and the first place I saw something like it was SortedFood. So excuse me while I try to find a video with a good clip of the line I need to explain this.

Yeah, that’ll cover it.

Alright, that took me a little longer than anticipated, mostly because I decided to get dinner in the middle of it. Oh damn, I just remembered I left a breakfast sandwich at home. Anywho, yes. The basic idea is that Sorted, at multiple points, make a “quick flatbread” recipe that relies on mixing yogurt with “flour”. However the picture tells you MOST of the recipe, but not all of it: most of the time, when SortedFood does this trick, by “flour”, they mean “self-rising flour”, which we talked about in our Flour culinary compendium, but for a quick recap: self-rising flour is flour pre mixed with a baking powder, and if you’re American, a little salt. It’s not AS common in America, for complicated cultural reasons that can be boiled down to Americans prefer slightly different kinds of baked goods, and put a higher premium on convenience, so we’re more likely to use something like Bisquick or a pre-made cake mix/when we do want to “hand make” something, we’re a little pricklier about doing it “authentically” so we don’t want a pre-mixed flour base.

So, why self-rising flour and yogurt? Well, that has to do with how baking powder works: as a reminder, baking powder itself is just “baking soda with some stuff added”. Specifically, baking powder, as a chemical base (the opposite of an acid), reacts with acidic ingredients to produce carbon dioxide, forming air bubbles that make breads fluffier. Baking Powder is just “baking soda mixed with a dry acid and a neutral buffer”, so that when you get it wet, it reacts, making the bubbles. (‘double-acting’ baking powder uses a slightly more complicated mixture so that it makes bubbles when it gets wet, and MORE bubbles when you heat it up.)

Double the action, equal amounts of vague white powder.

Thus, by combining Baking powder with yogurt, you do a couple things: firstly, you flavor the bread with some of the lactic tang of yogurt, giving it a subtly different flavor than “normal” bread. And secondly, that lactic tang comes from lactic ACID, meaning you’re mixing the baking powder into an already-acidic environment. This accelerates the reaction process, meaning you can get these done faster: depending on the ratios of ingredients, and the desired consistency of the flatbread, these can be done in somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes of resting. The third reason is that, paradoxically, yogurt has an enzyme that breaks down proteins, meaning that, when used in a bread, it makes it softer by weakening the gluten. With a full yeasted bread, that wouldn’t typically be a good idea, but it works in flatbread due to the speed and strength of the gluten.

But enough generalities, let’s talk specifics. How are we making our bread?

Wham, Bam, OH GODDA-

Our version isn’t going to be quite as wet as Mike’s from that earlier screenshot, since we’re going with a 5:3 ratio of flour to yogurt, though we’re also adding a little bit of honey. We’re also splitting our flour into 2 types, for extra chew and health benefits. We start with 1 ½ cups or 206 grams of bread flour.

Baking: the type of cooking where you say to yourself “Will being 2 grams off on the flour fuck up this dish?”

That’s a high-protein flour, very elastic and stretchy. To which we’re going to add ¼ cup (35 grams) of whole-wheat flour. This will add a nuttiness, more minerals, and a little bit of texture and color to the flatbread. 

Sometimes you gotta stop and weigh the flours.

And once you mix the yogurt, honey, a bit of salt, and both flours together, you’re going to work the dough into a shaggy ball, and then dump it out onto a floured surface. According to the cookbook, you want to make sure you get ALL the flour from the bowl, or the dough will be too wet. Knead it for a minute or two, until it’s “tacky, instead of sticky” (bit of a fine line to walk, that), which I was not a part of because I was busy dealing with a separate emergency.

Termites?

See, what I didn’t tell you is that, in the interest of cranking out recipes, we were actually making this recipe at the same time as the Miso-Marinated steak from last week. So as the meat was marinating, Nate was prepping the grill, I got out a marble slab to work the dough on, and then went to microwave some butter in order to melt it…without knowing that the container of breadcrumbs from the Smashburgers post had been set on top of the microwave, half on the door, so when I opened it, it plummeted, covering the burger cookbook, the floor, and my arm.

Thus, I don’t have any pictures of the dough kneading process, because I was busy salvaging what I could of the breadcrumbs, and cleaning some of what we couldn’t save up, while also flipping back and forth between the cookbook giving directions to my mother, who was kneading the dough and forming it into 6 balls, and Nate, who had taken the steak and gone outside to cook it, while also trying to melt butter.

SPEAKING of the butters, our title promised you “theoretical butters”, and, unlike certain bear-themed pizzerias, we do not promise dairy and renege, no sir! We ended up going with plain melted butter, but it’s worth noting that a simple recipe of “3 tablespoons melted butter, mixed with 1 tablespoon spice blend or paste” is a solid technique for a variety of possible flavored butters: Milk Street suggests Za’atar Butter, Harissa Butter, I bet Gochujang butter would work (though maybe start with 2 tsps and see how well it blends) They also suggest a garlic herb mix of 3 tbsp butter, 1 grated clove of garlic, and about 3 tbsps of finely chopped herbs (since herbs will naturally wilt somewhat in the hot butter). But yeah, depending on what you’re serving the flatbread with, you can mix a lot of potential seasonings into the butter.

Turns out I got ONE picture of the dough balls being formed. So enjoy this non-sequitor following all that talk of butters.

Once the dough is formed into balls, you can wait for 10 minutes before rolling each ball out into an 8” round, and slapping it onto a hot griddle or 10-12 inch cast iron skillet. And by “slap”, I DO MEAN slap.

Just put it in your hand and go to town. Wait, I don’t like that phrasing now.

That’s by no means necessary, but it does serve a vital role of letting you blow of some steam by being a bit silly. Cook for about 60-90 seconds on one side, until getting some nice dark brown spots, then flip and cook another 60 seconds. Move to a plate or rack, and brush with your flavored (or unflavored) butter.

Since we didn’t flavor ours, it is functionally invisible.

The results were very enjoyable, if a little fiddly; though, my family is ALWAYS desperately in need of counter space, so any recipe that requires rolling out dough is a bit fiddly for us. I’d definitely suggest it as a nice simple way to start experimenting with bread-making, or as a way to add a bit of flair to like, a normal hummus tray or crudités. Something that says “I went the extra mile”. Or Kilometer.

THURSDAY: MIGHT TALK ABOUT MOUNTAIN DEW, WEIRDLY, OR MAYBE I’LL THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE. I DON’T KNOW, MY BRAIN’S…NOT SCRAMBLED, BUT A LITTLE MUDDLED.

MONDAY: I THINK IT MIGHT BE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TYPE OF FLAT-BREAD. OR MAYBE CHICKEN. LET ME DOUBLE CHECK MY SUPPLIES AND SCHEDULE, AND HOPEFULLY I’LL KNOW BY THURSDAY.

Recipe

Yogurt Flatbread

Makes 6 flatbreads

Ingredients

1 ½ cups bread flour, plus more for dusting

¼ cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp baking powder

¾ cup whole milk yogurt

2 tsps honey

3 tbsp melted butter (or FLAVORED BUTTERS)

Preparation

1. Stir together dry ingredients. Add yogurt and honey, and stir until a shaggy dough forms. Knead until dough forms a ball, adding any dry bits sticking to the bowl, until everything is incorporated.

2. Turn out onto a dusted surface, and knead for 1 minute, until dough is tacky instead of sticky. Divide into 6 pieces, and roll each piece into a ball. Cover, and let rest for 10 minutes.

3. Heat a griddle or cast-iron skillet to medium high heat. Roll each ball out into an 8” circle. Place on the griddle/skillet and cook for 60-90 seconds, until dark spotty brown. Flip, and cook another 60 or so seconds. Move to a wire rack or plate, and brush with butter. Serve warm.