Exotic Breads

Exotic breads include flat unleavened doughs, made with-out any yeast or other raising agent. The techniques here cover chapatis which are unleavened wholemeal breads and parathas which are made from a similar dough but are layered with ghee (Indian clarified butter) or melted butter to produce a much richer, flakier bread. They are also shallow-fried instead of dry fried.

Pitta bread, although containing yeast, is often thought of as a flat bread. The puffed-up ‘pocket’ produced in baking makes it an ideal container for all kinds of wonderful fillings. I sometimes add extra flavour to pitta bread by incorporating finely chopped fresh herbs or chopped black olives into the dough while I am kneading it. It is the oven’s intense heat that makes these soft, thinly rolled-out doughs rise. During baking, moisture in the dough is con verted to steam and this creates a pocket which makes the bread puff up. Yeast relies on a flour with a high gluten content, so unleavened breads can be made with flours with little or no gluten, such as cornmeal, barley, oatmeal, rye and buckwheat flours.