Armenian · Bread
Lavash
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
A quiet dish that lets its main ingredient speak: season well and stand aside.
Ingredients
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 320 ml warm water
- 10 g fine salt
- 3 g instant yeast
- flour for the bench
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix flour, water, salt and yeast to a shaggy mass, then knead about 8 minutes, until the dough pulls off the bench in one clean piece and a pinched edge stretches thin without tearing. 8 min
- Cover and leave at room temperature until it feels slack and no longer springs back when pressed, at least 1 hour. 60 min
- Divide into 100 g pieces, ball them, rest 20 minutes, and meanwhile heat a dry cast iron pan or steel plate over the highest flame until a flick of water skitters and vanishes. 20 min
- Roll one ball out to 1 mm, as wide as the pan, lifting and turning the sheet often; if it fights back and shrinks, set it aside and roll the next one.
- Lay the sheet on the dry pan. It should blister within 20 seconds; turn once the blisters brown in patches and lift it off while still flexible, about 40 seconds in all.
- Stack the finished sheets under a damp cloth so their own steam keeps them soft enough to fold.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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