Bedouin Bread

Over the past year or so I have been making more and more bread. Every other day or so I make a sour dough or yeasted loaf but I suspect the breads my children like and will remember the most are the flat breads. I have already written a post on pita but today I thought I

would write about Bedouin flat bread. This is Dominic’s recipe really since he was the one who persevered in finding an alternative to a saj (a kind of upside down wok that the Bedouin use to cook these breads) and he has experimented with different ratios of flour to water.

   We discovered this unleavened flat bread a couple of years ago on holiday in Jordan. Whilst staying in a hotel owned and run by Bedouin we visited a woman who made flat breads for the hotel breakfast in her cooking tent. Whilst we did see modern gas powered saj’s, mostly these breads are cooked under an open wood fire giving them a lovely smoky taste.

When we have made them at home they almost always become a team effort (in much the same way that the bedouin women make them.) Dom, Josh and I made the ones in the picture at the weekend. We will be trying it out on a wood fire in the garden this summer.

• 4 cups of bread flour
• 2 ½ cups of water
2 teaspoons of salt.

Mix into a dough and kneed for about 10 minutes until soft. Split the dough into balls a little bigger than a golf ball. Cover with a damp tea towel and leave for about 10 minutes to rest. Roll out the first ball using a rolling pin and adding flour to avoid it sticking. Pick up the dough and stretch it out gently until the bread is paper thin. Carefully spread it on the saj and leave for just a few seconds. Turn the bread over and cook the other side for the same amount of time.

You can fill the bread like a wrap, dip it in hummus and soups or simply rip it up and eat it plain.