Easter makes me think about bread…..I assume that it’s the time of year. I have also been aware that Passover, a spring festival that typically falls in March or April, is upon us. I know relatively little about the observance of Pesach, but the unleavened bread thing always sticks in my mind. So I thought I’d see how hard it was to make some. Turns out it was quite easy.
Unleavened bread, as a search term, brings a wide variety of recipes to your laptop, from ones using baking powder to strict Kosher versions. As I was making it with the Little Misses, I didn’t want to make a flour-and-water-type-bread, but luckily I found the ideal unleavened bread recipe on Honeycomb Adventures. I have reproduced it below with UK equivalents and alterations I made.
Unleavened Bread
240ml cold water
1 egg
100ml honey
3 tbsp butter, melted- this gives about 45ml
30ml oil
1 tsp salt
500g bread flour
Place all ingredients except the flour in a mixing bowl and mix well. Add 2/3 of flour and mix, then stir in the remaining flour, a little at a time, with a wooden spoon until you have the right consistency. You have added enough flour when the dough leaves the sides of the bowl and follows the spoon. In actual fact I needed all of my flour.
Then knead the bread on a floured surface for about five minutes until it becomes elastic. By this I mean that it springs back into shape if you stretch it or squash it.
Shape the dough into two balls and put each one on a baking tray that has been greased or lined. Flatten each ball out with your (oiled) hands, followed by an oiled rolling pin until it is 5mm thick.
Using a sharp knife, make cuts across the dough in both directions to create a criss-cross of squares. Then poke one or two holes in each square with the tip of the knife.
Bake at 200C until edges begin to turn brown. The type of baking sheet influences baking time considerably, so watch it closely. It takes about 9-12 minutes.
The resulting bread is strongly reminiscent of a sweet naan and quite appealing. It doesn’t keep particularly well, so you can always make half the recipe. I’m having a go at a rosemary and salt one next…..
Cool! I’m glad you found my recipe on Honeycomb Adventures. It was an experiment that I was happy with. I’ll have to try your adaptations as well.
yumm, looks delicious, and actually there are some Jews originally from Yemen that eat Matzo that looks similar to this….just a bit flatter. We eat round hand made matzos that are made in 18 minutes or less from the time the water touches the flour to the baking is finished, imagine that! Thanks for sharing on Craft Schooling Sunday!
You are welcome Sara- probably a bit cheeky linking up a recipe for something you have known how to make all your life. I’ve never made it before so was interested to see a) what it was and b) how it turned out. And 18 minutes? That’s very precise timing!