---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.02
  
       Title: LAVASH
  Categories: Breads, Turkish
       Yield: 8 servings
  
       1 pk Yeast
       2 c  Warm water
       2 tb Sugar
   5 1/2 c  All purpose flour
       2 ts Salt
  
   Lightly oil a bowl for the dough. Mix the yeast, water
   and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and
   salt and mix until it forms a well-blended but
   somewhat soft dough. (resist the temptation to work in
   any more flour than absolutely necessary.) Knead the
   dough by hand or machine. If by hand, turn it out on a
   floured board and work it until it is smooth and
   elastic, approximately 10 minutes. If using a dough
   hook on an electric mixer, knead the dough at the
   slowest speed for about 5 minutes. Pat the dough into
   a ball and put it in the oiled bowl. Cover the dough
   with a kitchen towel and set it in a warm, draft-free
   place to rise until the dough has doubled in bulk,
   about 30 to 40 minutes.  (A perfect place is a gas
   oven with its slight heat given off by the pilot
   light; an electric oven, turned on low for no more
   than 2 minutes, then turned off, works equally well.)
   When the dough has doubled, turn it out on a floured
   board, punch it down, and knead it again until there
   is no air left in it.  Divide the dough into 8 round
   mounds, place them on the board, cover again with a
   towel, and let rise until almost doubled, about
   30-minutes. While the dough is rising, preheat the
   oven to 450F. Position a rack as close as possible to
   the oven bottom. Flour a 12x15-in baking sheet. When
   the 8 mounds of dough have risen, roll them out, one
   piece at a time into rectangles about 12x15 inches
   (the size of a standard sheet pan) and about as thin
   as for a pizza. Puncture the entire surface at
   1/2-inch intervals with the tines of a roasting fork.
   Bake the breads, one at a time, for 6 to 8 minutes, or
   until the tops are lightly browned.  Remove each
   finished bread to a wire rack to cool and continue
   baking the remaining breads until all 8 are finished.
   During the baking, if any large bubbles start to puff
   up, puncture them immediately with a fork. The bread
   in the Middle East is traditionally a type of cracker
   bread called lavash (lawasha in Assyrian). This flat
   leavened bread is available in grocery stores and
   specialty markets and can be eaten as a cracker in the
   dry, crisp form in which it comes.  However to serve
   along with a meal, it is preferable to dampen it so
   that it becomes more breadlike. Moisten the lavash,
   one cracker at a time, under cold running water,
   making sure that both sides are completely wet; place
   in a plastic bag for 3 hours, at the end of which time
   the bread will be pliable and chewy. Lavash prepared
   in this fashion is also used for Aram sandwiches. In
   the old country, a lavash bread would bake in a clay
   bottomed oven in 2 to 3 minutes. You can get much the
   same result baking on a ceramic baking tile or
   directly on the floor of a gas oven.
  
 -----

Plain Text Version of This Recipe for Printing or Saving