Are you a fan of pizza? But, do you feel you cheat when you eat pizza? I don’t want you to make this recipe, because it’s a healthy alternative to the most common fast food! But because, it’s so fresh, so crunchy and yet so different.Mediterranean herbs. It’s a very nice and different recipe, a little long but definitely worth it.Let’s talk about Caramelizing Onions a bit:Yes, it's a slow process but it really isn’t that hard. Just requires a bit of olive oil, lots of julienne cut onions and spices & herbs. It also requires a bit of patience as it is done on low to medium heat flame.If you don’t like making bread, that’s totally fine! You can make this recipe on a pizza base or a market bought flatbread base as well.BUT, if you’re making the base for this one. Here are some helpful pointers to work with Yeast!Water: Only use Warm Water when trying to activate yeast. Both hot and cold water will kill the yeast. Use Lukewarm Water!Salt vs Sugar: Sugar helps the yeast to activate, to make it frothy and to give a better rise. Whilst, salt is the opposite, it's an anti-agent. Salt should only be incorporated in the dough towards the final stages of it.Proofing: YES IT REQUIRES PATIENCE! You need to find a warm place, a Switched Off oven is the best place to proof your bread. In areas where it's generally cold or during Winters, it will take longer to proof say about a little bit more than an hour. But during Warm Climate or/and Humid Weather, it will take relatively shorter, close to around 40 minutes.Alright, it’s a long recipe so let’s get to it!Here’s the recipe for the Flatbread Dough. It’s somewhat similar to a Focaccia Recipe. If you’re not making the dough, SCROLL DOWN for the base & topping recipe.This recipe will shell out a big size flatbread, good for 4-6 people to hog on it. Alternatively, you can reduce this recipe to half if need be. You will just need to divide all the ingredients by half.
Equipment
- oven
- Skillet
- Utensils
Ingredients
For the Dough:
- 500 gm 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
- 5 gm 1 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
- 5 gm 1 tsp Sugar
- 10 gm 2 tsp Salt
- 10 ml Olive Oil
- Water as Required- Lukewarm (keeping adding slowly until the dough starts coming together, about 250-300 ml of water)
For the Base & the Toppings:
- 1 kg Onions sliced (julienne cut)
- 85 ml Olive Oil
- 30 gm Butter
- Few Sprigs of Thyme/Rosemary
- 1 tbsp garlic sliced
- 200 gm mushrooms (optional)
- ½ tsp sugar
- Generous amount of Mozzarella &/or Goat Cheese
- Arugula for topping
- 2 tbsp olives (optional)
- 2 tbsp sundried tomatoes (optional)
- 1 tbsp jalapenos (optional)
- Salt & pepper to taste
- Few pink peppercorns
Instructions
For the Dough:
- Take a bowl, whisk together Sugar, Yeast and Some of the Water and let it sit to Froth properly.
- Put Flour onto a Plain Surface and make a well (alternatively, you may use a stand mixer as well).
- Add in your Yeast Sugar mixture and start kneading. Start adding in the remaining water at this point and knead well.
- Generate heat from your palms and try to form the dough. When all the water is added, add in Olive Oil & salt and Knead further.
- Knead it into a tight ball. When done, weigh your dough, should be somewhere around 900 grams.
- Now you have two options: Either you can make a huge flatbread for all or you may divide it into two equal halves and make them separately. Both options work just fine!
- Put it(them) in a bowl(s) and refrigerate overnight. It should be bigger by now. But not super big as only a marginal quantity of yeast was used.
- Pin (using a rolling pin) it in a way it forms a rectangle with a thickness of half an inch ( ½ inch thickness). Poke holes with a fork. Not too many!
- Half bake it at 180° Celsius for 10 minutes. We will bake it again at the same temperature for a similar time period, after toppings have been added.
- Let’s get to the Base & Toppings now (if you are not making this dough or you’re making half the size of the dough of you are getting the base from outside, DIVIDE the entire recipe by half)
For the Base & Toppings:
- Take a pan or a skillet and add 2 tbsp. Olive Oil and 2 tbsp. Butter.
- After the butter has melted, add some fresh sprigs of Rosemary (dry rosemary works too but fresh is preferred.)
- Keep it at low to medium heat and then add all your Onions (julienne cut).
- Continue to keep on low to medium heat, keep mixing in between. When the onions are softer, add some salt and brown sugar. Add salt only a little, you can revisit the flavors later, during Taste Check! Add Black Pepper and Pink peppercorns here, as well.
- Keep it covered, and switch off the gas when the Onions are light brown in color. Do a Taste Check now and season accordingly.
- Now if you want to add mushrooms, sauté them in a separate pan with your choice of seasoning. I used Thyme for mushrooms as I was using Rosemary to flavor the onions. You can do it however, you feel like doing it.
- Add a bit of Mozzarella cheese (a bit and in patches only). You can also add a bit of Sundried Tomatoes (in patches).
- Make the flatbread again at 180 degrees for 10 minutes or until done. Keep checking at this point.
- When your flatbread is done and out of the oven, you can (optional) top it up with these toppings: Cheese (Mozzarella or Goat), Arugula leaves, Olives, Jalapenos.
- Drizzle with Chilli or Truffle Oil
Closing Note
A recipe, which is freshest of them all. You can enjoy every crunch with an amalgamation of flavours!
Go on, try it! Get gourmet flavours into your homes, now.
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