Lavash {bba}

The next bread for me to bake from Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice as part of The BBA Challenge is Lavash, which Wikipedia explains is a cracker bread of Armenian origin, and very popular in surrounding countries as well. In his recipe, Peter Reinhart gives the option of baking the same dough into pita bread, that soft hollow flat bread that makes a great vehicle for sandwich fillings and salads.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- I substituted fresh yeast for the instant yeast in my dough.

- The recipe called for honey; I used honey crystals which I thought would be a good balance for the extra liquid in the fresh yeast.

- The type of vegetable oil in my lavash was olive oil.

- It turned out that I was low on bread flour, so I filled in with a bit of high-gluten flour.

- I rolled my dough so thin that it was almost transparent.

- In Peter Reinhart's hands Lavash is covered with a variety of seeds such as poppy seeds and sesame seeds. Most of the seed options are not favorites in this house, so I decided to go with coarse salt, for my own version of saltine crackers.

- After baking, the bread is broken into shards, which make quite appealing-looking crackers.


the verdict:

The lavash baked up to be crispy and delicate, and I was shocked at how good simple crackers could taste. They just about melted in my mouth! Around our house the favorite way to enjoy this flat bread was unaccompanied; in fact we loved it so much that we ate lavash for dessert for several days in a row until there was none left. Just the crackers, plain - absolutely perfect!

I'm sending this fabulous flat bread to Yeastspotting, the weekly roundup of all things yeast-y. Stop by on Friday to see what clever bakers worldwide have been baking this week.