Hummus and Flatbreads

If you are ready and willing, I’d like to let you in on a little secret.

Ready? Good

Willing? Excellent.



Here we go: you never need to buy another flatbread, pita bread, wrap, tortilla or naan bread ever again.

They are so easy to make, so very tasty, so incredibly fast and so extraordinarily cheap that it makes almost no sense to buy them.

Before I started keeping a ‘mother dough’ in the fridge, I used to make flatbreads with a simple flour and water dough, flavoured with a little salt and olive oil (about 250g of bread flour, 150ml of warm water and seasoning to taste).



Within five minutes it was possible to have a steaming pile of hot, blistered flatbreads ready to be torn apart by hungry guests and dipped into garlicky hummus or wrapped round a spicy lamb kofta.

Now all I do is tear a small handful of dough from the bubbling mass in the fridge, incorporate a little extra flour to make a workable dough, roll extra thinly and cook for 30 seconds on each side in a hot, dry, frying pan.

For pita breads, after the dough has been rolled, fold it over on itself once, then once again to trap a layer of air in the dough. Roll it out and cook as above. It should puff up like a little pillow as steam gets trapped inside the bread. Perfect for slicing open and stuffing with falafel, salad and tzaiki .

We cook these a lot. Brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, they are an ideal snack and near impossible not to eat whilst they are still too hot.



Dipped in hummus, too, they are wonderful. Blitz a tin of chickpeas, some of the reserved water, two cloves of garlic, olive oil and seasoning in a food processor and you have an insta-lunch.

I tend to sprinkle a little smoked paprika over the top as well, just to add a slight warmth and depth of flavour. Just delicious.

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