Time for an excellent party food. I haven’t made flatbreads before and these blew my mind.

Kolej na doskonałe żarcie imprezowe. Nie robiłem nigdy wcześniej podpłomyków, a te niszczą system.

I often see questions about something fast and simple to make for a party. And usually I have nothing of this type to offer. Sure, I’ve seen the ideas, but never tried making them.

Initially I wanted to make something from India, encouraged by Facebook comments under the gozleme post, but then I found this, and it’s very simple to make. The recipe comes from “How to make bread” (sources). The dip is Gosia’s idea.

Armenian flatbread

Planning

None. There isn’t anything to do in advance (apart from getting the ingredients). Make sure you have a baking paper. Timing: about 50 minutes working with the dough, 5-10 minutes to prepare first two flatbreats, 5-10 minutes baking for each pair of flatbreads while you prepare the next one.

You’ll need a brush and pizza knife may be handy (but it’s not essential). Oh, and baking sheets.

Ingredients

This makes four portions of six flatbreads. I would personally recommend doing two to four for a party, as they go easily and fast.

Bread

• 160 g strong white wheat flour
• 5 g salt
• 50 g olive oil
• 75 g water

Spread

• 10 g olive oil
• 10 g water
• one garlic clove, crushed

Topping

I’m not providing numbers. I used half of an onion for this quantity and a bit of the seeds, let’s say two teaspoons of each. You’ll mix more if needed.

• sesame seeds
• poppy seeds
• black onion seeds
• thinly sliced red onion

Dip

• a bit of thick natural yogurt
• one clove of garlic, crushed
• a bit of finely diced red onion for decoration

Preparation

1. Before you start the dough, mix the spread ingredients in a bowl and put aside for the flavours to come together

2. Mix wet dough ingredients in a medium bowl and dry ones in a small bowl. Add the dry to the wet and mix until it forms a dough. You won’t need much kneading

3. Repeat the below steps 3 times:

   1. Cover and leave for 5 minutes
   2. Do a stretch and fold: pull a bit of dough from the ball and put it over the ball. Rotate a little bit and stretch another bit. Repeat this until you turn the bowl around

4. Cover and leave for 30 minutes. Turn the oven on to 180 C degrees. Using the fan or not will not make much difference here. Know your oven

   

   The dough, split in four

5. Divide dough in four, then place each bit on a baking paper and start stretching. In my case the dough wasn’t insanely stretchy (not enough gluten, perhaps?), so more than stretching I was pressing the dough to become thinner and thinner, beginning from the inside and working towards the edges. I’ve noticed this way the dough doesn’t tear as much as when you pull it in the air.

   

   Spreading the dough, as mentioned, pressing against the paper gives better results than stretching in the air

   If you feel the dough is resisting too much and may tear, give it a bit of a rest for the gluten to relax a bit, and work on the other piece of dough.
   The dough should be really thin, almost see-through

   

   Fully stretched though, almost paper thin

6. Use the brush to cover the bread with spread

7. Cut with the pizza knife into six portions

8. Put onion on top, then sprinkle with seeds

   

   Armenian flatbread, ready to bake

9. Bake for 5-10 minutes (until they get goldenish-brownish), then let them cool down. If you can resist

10. For the dip, mix yogurt with garlic, sprinkle onion on top of it in the serving dish

    

    Armenian flatbreads, served with a dip and an edible nasturtium flour (tastes a bit like radish)

I had problems having enough of them to make a picture, as the kids were grabbing them one after another. Absolutely moreish. This will be your party hit.