flatbread – Ali Does It Herself

When I was younger, and my dad was away at sea and my brothers had gone out for the evening, my mother and I would sometimes take it easy from dinner preparation for one night and do something quick and dirty with the leftovers we had in the fridge. Now that I’m a grown-up, it’s the perfect thing to cobble together on nights when the Pie is out of town and all I want to do is plant my butt on the couch with a beer and watch the game. You just need three things: leftover spaghetti sauce (the chunkier the better), cheese, and rice cakes (this also works on pita, na’an, and any other form of flat bread).

Heat up the sauce a bit and grate some cheese.

Gren has realized I have the cheese grater out.

Gren is trying to inhale the cheese from where he’s standing. I love it when he wrinkles up his face like that because I know if he could see himself doing it he’d be totally embarrassed.

Line a baking sheet with parchment, move your oven rack to the middle, and turn on your broiler (don’t move it to the top or you will simply set all this on fire). Place your rice cakes(or flatbread) on the baking sheet. Top the rice cakes with your warm sauce.

Add grated cheese. Give some to your dog or he won’t go away. To make it less sad singleton, I added some fresh basil out of the garden and that made me feel a little less lazy and pathetic.

Broil until the cheese is melted to your satisfaction.

Eat!

One of the benefits of having a friend who has a gluten intolerance is that I get to learn all sorts of new recipes. This one I served up as an appetizer at Easter dinner. At first, it seemed questionable and I doubted it would work, but when I did it, I was pleasantly surprised.

First, preheat your broiler (the top grill in your oven) to its highest setting and move the top rack as close to it as possible.

Then, using a scale, measure out 150g gluten-free flour. For the purposes of this recipe I used half white rice flour and half soy flour.

So you have your flour. Now you also need olive oil, sea salt, and some warm water. The amount of water you will need will vary but on this particular occasion I needed about 1 cup.

Slowly add the water to your flour mixture, stirring the whole time. When you come up with a mixture closely resembling cake batter then you’re all ready to go.

Pour some olive oil onto your baking sheet and spread it around with your fingers. In retrospect I would have used an older sheet where the oil would have stuck better to the surface.

Roughly spoon your bread batter onto the oiled sheet and drizzle some more oil over top. Make your hands nice and oily too — it helps.

Use your fingers to spread the batter to the edges of the pan. You will get some areas where the batter is translucent — this is a good thing — and this is where your big bubbles will happen when the bread cooks.

Sprinkle it with sea salt and whatever spices you want.

Place the bread under the broiler and keep an eye on it. When it starts to char in places, after a few minutes, take it out.

So this is the top:

Use a spatula and your fingers to flip it over. You can see how, because the oil moved away from the surface of the pan, I had some sticking issues. This wouldn’t happen in an older pan.