An excellent bread for tearing into chunks and eating with grilled chicken and salad, or splitting and filling with hummus and roquette. Warmed and eaten with a tomato salad is good too – very good in fact.

Very easy to make – almost foolproof. More of a flattish bread than a genuine flat bread like pitta and predominantly Iranian in style.  The cheese and herbs suffuse the dough from inside during the cooking and give a lovely warming, salty tang to everything.

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  • 175 g yogurt (plain Balkan is ideal) dissolved in 250ml of warm water
  • Sachet of yeast
  • Salt
  • 400g plain white bread flour
  • 125g wholemeal flour
  1. Mix the dry ingredients and add the yeast if using a rapid yeast – if using traditional yeast start it in the water/yogurt mixture
  2. Add liquid to flour and mix.  Knead thoroughly – it makes quite a wet dough. Let stand for ten minutes.
  3. Oil your hands, pick up the dough fold it onto itself six or eight times. Cover and leave for 30 minutes.
  4. Put the dough onto a baking sheet covered with baking parchment and stretch it out flat with your hands. Fold the ends over themselves in thirds and leave for another 30 minutes.
  5. Stretch the dough into a large, very flat sheet and cut into two or four pieces depending on the size of breads you want (the photo above shows a half and two quarters to give you an idea of how it will come out).
  6. Spoon a mixture of chopped/crumbled feta chess, olive oil, dried mint and cumin seeds into the middle of the flattened dough and then fold the shorter sides in thirds over the filling. Tuck in the ends to seal the package if necessary.  Press down and flatten again (and I mean flatten). Leave for 20-30 minutes.  Tapenade as bought from the store is a good alternative filling as well … or whatever suits you.
  7. Put the oven on to heat up.  While it does so, stretch the breads again with your fingers – it wants to be quite thin.  Oil the tops and, if you wish, sprinkle with oregano, paprika or the topping of your choice in which case it is nice without a filling – or don’t, this is a matter of personal taste.
  8. Bake at 350degF to 400degF (lower if you have a fan oven, higher if not) for 15 minutes or thereabouts.
  9. Marvel at your achievement and enjoy the results.

** note: when handling the dough, oil your hands and do not use flour to stop it sticking to you.  This is quite important.