By Victoria Petersen
For the Peninsula Clarion
For a while there, it seemed like a lot of my meals consisted of stuff on toast. Cream cheese and lox on sourdough. Cheese. Ricotta. Leafy greens. Leftover salmon.
Toast, albeit a great vehicle for leftovers, is more of a snack. We decided to try a different method: stuff on flatbread.
The recipe we used was on the back of the flour bag, and it was pretty simple: flour, water, yeast. This pizza dough or flatbread, however you want to make it, would be the vehicle for our leftovers.
I made a creamy tzatziki sauce with some yogurt that was about to go bad. We had leftover lemony salmon. There was some rogue arugula and spinach, half a red onion, a chunk of feta cheese and a bag of dill to use up as well. The dough made two small rounds and we baked them with the salmon, cheese and onion. Before we dug in, we topped with the tzatziki, greens, dill and a squeeze of lemon. It was a Greek-style pizza of sorts.
Flatbreads and pizza dough have nearly infinite possibilities though. Smear the bread with ricotta and smother it with roasted veggies and fresh herbs. You could put a layer of pesto on the flatbread, sprinkle something cheesy and top it with some blistered cherry tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil. Maybe even eat a dessert flatbread slathered with sweet jam or jelly and topped with whipped cream? Maybe just throw together whatever needs to be used up in your fridge and pantry.
Recipe for flatbread or pizza dough adapted from the “Perfect Pizza Crust” recipe on the back of the Bob’s Red Mill Flour bag.
Ingredients:
3⁄4 cups warm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast or instant yeast
2 cups of bread flour
1 1⁄2 teaspoon of salt
1. In a large bowl, add the water and yeast and wait a minute or two to let the yeast bloom.
2. Add in the flour and salt. Mix until the dough is shaggy.
3. On a lightly floured surface, knead the shaggy dough until it is smooth and a little bit tacky, which should take about five minutes. Add small amounts of flour if the dough is too sticky.
4. In an oiled bowl, leave the dough to rise for about one hour. The dough should double in size.
5. The dough can be used immediately or stored in the fridge for about three days. Once the dough is ready to be used, preheat the oven to 500 degrees and line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Cut the dough in half and place each portion on the baking sheets, stretching and pressing them into a disk-shaped form. Add any toppings and bake for about 10 minutes, looking for a golden brown crust. Enjoy!
