“Let's eat bread” is what they say in Armenia when they are invited to have breakfast, lunch or dinner. The recipe for making Armenian lavash has its own characteristics.
Bread among many peoples is really the head, and Armenian lavash not an exception. The foundation of the foundations, the beginning of the beginnings - that they just don’t cook from lavash, today it’s not only in the Caucasus! With what pleasure, in spite of the many delicious meals, we eat sandwiches with lavash! How many snacks from it invented! Lavash cooking is varied, tasty, loved in many cuisines. And there are so many recipes for pita bread that it’s time to start collecting ...
Armenian lavash is just a kind of Armenian bread, the same as rural or matnakash. But besides, it is a common name for all flour cakes baked in an ancient Caucasian country with an amazingly tasty and capricious culinary tradition.
Fortunately, you can cook Armenian lavash at home, even if your kitchen is a thousand kilometers away from Armenia. And you can cook it in the most authentic way - almost the way Armenian bakers cook cakes. With the difference that we will have a conventional oven, and not a special oven.
A little about baking Armenian lavash
Armenian lavash is shaped like an oblong pancake up to 2 cm thick in the middle and up to 4 along the edges, almost a meter long and about 40 cm wide, it weighs about 450 grams. It has a bubbly surface and an uneven color due to this: it is pale itself, and the swellings are fried.
An interesting feature is that not yeast is used as a starter, but a piece of old dough, the so-called tthmore. The recipe for lavash is as follows: flour - 10 kg, water - 7-8 liters, salt - 170-230 grams and old dough - 130-180 grams.
They bake lavash in a tonir - a special oven (Georgians, who also bake lavash, call the oven "torne"). Before the cake gets on baking, the dough is stretched and straightened on a landing pillow, from which it is thrown into the oven. The process of “throwing” (literally) is very interesting: the baker hangs almost his whole body into the oven (and it is deep, most often partially dug into the ground) and with a deft movement sticks the cake to the wall of the oven.
As seen from traditional cooking pita bread, you need a very high temperature for baking, so set it in the oven to the maximum. Well, we don’t have the old dough, so we’ll just cook with yeast (by the way, you can cook without yeast at all).
Ingredients
- flour - 1 kg
- fresh yeast - 25 grams
- salt - 1 tbsp. spoon
- water - 2.5-3.5 cups
How to cook Armenian lavash at home
Dilute in warm water yeast.
Sift flour into a large bowl, add salt and mix.
Make a well in the flour, pour in the diluted yeast.
Adding a little water, knead the dough.
At first, this can be done directly in the bowl, and then, if the bowl is not spacious enough, transfer the contents to the work surface and continue kneading.
Knead for about 20 minutes. The dough should not stick to your hands, should not be steep. Put it back in the bowl, sprinkle with flour, cover with cling film, put in heat (it should double in size).
Lay out on a floured surface.
Divide the dough for pita bread into small balls, roll out thinly. You can give them an oval shape or round.
Bake on a baking sheet in an oven preheated to the highest possible temperature. You can bake pita bread and on fire in cast iron pan flipping from one side to the other.
Put the finished cakes in a bag so that they become soft.
Other types and recipes of Armenian lavash
From the same dough you can bake rural bread And matnakash . For both, you need to put a bun on a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil, flatten it into a flat cake, thick for bread and thin for matnakash. Lubricate with water.
MATNAKASH. For matnakash, apply grooves around the circumference and in the middle.
Bake products at t 220 until golden brown for 50 minutes.
RURAL BREAD. Poke a hole in the middle for the bread.
That's how golden it turns out.
If you haven't baked Armenian lavash at home, you can't even imagine how the kitchen smells!
Lavash is a wonderful alternative to bread. Moreover, a variety of dishes can be prepared from popular oriental cakes. Armenian lavash is especially actively used, on the basis of which hundreds of dishes can be prepared. But thick cakes are no less tasty. But real connoisseurs of oriental bread do not always manage to get really tasty and fresh lavash. So why not cook it?
Lavash at home - general principles of preparation
Thin lavash (Armenian) is a canvas that resembles paper. Most often prepared from unleavened dough. Lavash in the form of flat cakes are prepared on the basis of yeast or fermented milk products. Ideally, they are cooked in a tandoor, but now even oriental bakers are increasingly turning to modern technology to make the process easier.
The basis of any pita bread is flour, which must be sifted, mixed with liquid and salt. Yeast dough keep warm for at least an hour. But if the rise is weak, then the time can be increased. Unleavened dough you need to lie down for at least 20 minutes so that the gluten swells, the mass becomes more elastic, rolls out easier and does not shrink.
The amount of flour in the recipes is approximate and may vary slightly, depending on the moisture content of the product. You just need to know that the dough for unleavened pita bread should be as steep as possible, it is kneaded until the lump stops taking flour. The consistency of the yeast dough should be softer, more airy so that the yeast can rise.
Recipe for thin Armenian lavash at home
To prepare ordinary pita bread at home, you need only three ingredients, and they can be found in every home. Such pita bread is stored in a bag for up to four days, so you can always fry the cakes in advance. The number of products is designed for 7 round pita breads, with a diameter of 25-28 cm. The pan should be no less.
Ingredients
300 grams of flour;
170 grams of water;
½ teaspoon salt.
You will also need a mixer with nozzles for thick dough (usually they are in the form of spirals).
Cooking
1. Boil water, dissolve the salt and let it cool for literally 5 minutes, no more.
2. At this time, sift the flour, pour it into a deep bowl, make a recess.
3. Pour in hot water, take a mixer and start kneading the dough. It will immediately seem that there is too much flour, the lumps will be dry, but this is not so. Knead for 5 minutes, everything will come together and in the end it will turn out thick, but not very beautiful dough. At the end, it will need to be laid out on the table and kneaded with your hands.
4. We form a bun, cover with a film and let it lie down for half an hour. During this time, the gluten will swell, the dough will become elastic, smooth and pliable.
5. We divide our bun into 7 equal parts. Roll out each into a thin cake.
6. We heat the pan and fry the pita bread on both sides. Here it is very important to choose correct temperature. If it is high, the pita bread will burn and acquire ugly tan marks. If the fire is small, then the pita bread will dry out and crumble.
7. Put the finished pita bread on a moistened towel, also cover and layer each cake. Otherwise, they will dry out quickly and crumble.
Georgian lavash recipe at home
Georgian flatbread differs from Armenian lavash in splendor, softness, and a pleasant salty taste. The recipe is not much more complicated than the previous one. To prepare this pita bread at home, dry yeast is used, but you can also take fresh yeast.
Ingredients
300 grams of flour;
1 teaspoon of yeast;
1 teaspoon of salt;
1 teaspoon of sugar;
200 grams of water.
Cooking
1. Sift the flour and mix with all the other dry ingredients, make a recess in the center of the pile.
2. We heat the water to a warm state. Its temperature should be around 45 degrees.
3. Pour into flour and knead elastic dough. We knead until it stops sticking to the hands and the walls of the dishes.
4. Cover the bowl with the dough with a towel, leave for an hour. The mass should come up, increase well in volume.
5. We take out the dough from the cup, stretch the circle with our hands. The rolling pin is not used. Put the resulting pita bread on a greased baking sheet, make a hole in the center with your finger. It should be large enough, as the cake will rise during baking.
6. We send pita bread to the oven, bake until cooked at 220 degrees. Then we take it out, cover it with a clean towel and let it lie under it. If this is not done, the crust will become tough.
Thin pita bread at home - a recipe with yeast
Another version of the pita bread recipe at home, but with yeast and butter. It is baked in a pan, we also make small cakes according to the diameter of the dish.
Ingredients
200 grams of water;
7 grams of yeast;
50 grams of oil;
400 grams of flour;
1 tsp salt.
Cooking
1. We heat the water, dissolve the salt with yeast, pour a glass of flour and let it stand for 10 minutes.
2. Melt the butter, cool. You can use margarine, but fatty, with a small amount water. Pour into dough. We stir.
3. Pour the remaining flour, knead the dough. Cover with a napkin and leave warm for half an hour.
4. Divide the dough into 7 balls, cover and let stand for another 10 minutes. This is necessary in order to make it easier to roll pita bread.
5. Roll out the cakes, they should be as thin as possible.
6. Bake cakes in a dry frying pan on both sides.
7. We put it on the table, immediately cover it with a towel. We put pita bread on top of each other and let it cool in this form.
8. Then we remove the towel and transfer it to the bag. But if you plan to use pastries right away, then you don’t need to do this, we use fresh pita bread until they dry out.
Another option for thin pita bread at home is a recipe for kefir
If you fry a blank from this dough in a dry frying pan, you get an analogue of Armenian lavash. And if you fry in butter or vegetable oil, you get a very tasty, ruddy and fragrant cake. like this universal recipe pita bread at home.
Ingredients
A glass of kefir;
1 tsp soda;
1 tsp salt;
A spoonful of butter.
Cooking
1. Pour kefir into a bowl, add soda and mix well. The mass will foam, the quenching process will begin. Add salt, oil and stir until completely dissolved.
2. Pour the sifted flour, knead the stiff dough. It should turn out rough, a little dry, not sticky to hands and dishes. So it should be, lie down and become more elastic.
3. Cover the dough cling film, leave for half an hour.
4. Divide into 5-6 parts, roll the balls and cover again so as not to dry out.
5. We take one at a time, roll it with a rolling pin into thin cakes.
6. Fry on both sides in a dry frying pan or in oil.
7. If pita breads were prepared in a dry way, then after baking they should immediately be covered with a towel. Dry cakes should be covered with wet wipes or gauze so that they become elastic.
Thin pita bread at home - a recipe for the oven
Lavash baked in a pan are delicious, fragrant, but it happens that you need a large cake. For example, for appetizer roll or multilayer shawarma. Or maybe you just don't have the right pan. In this case, you can make thin pita bread in the oven, the recipe is simple, but this method has several features.
Ingredients
150 grams of water;
350 grams of flour;
3 tablespoons of oil;
1 teaspoon of salt.
Cooking
1. Sift flour, divide into two parts.
2. Dissolve salt in water, add oil and combine with half the flour. Stir until the mass is homogeneous. Add the remaining flour, knead the elastic dough. We remove for 30 minutes.
3. Divide the dough into arbitrary pieces. The size depends on the dimensions of the tray.
4. Take one piece, roll it out. It is not necessary to make pita bread round. You can roll out an oval and even make a square by cutting off the curved sides.
5. Put pita bread on a baking sheet, send to bake. The temperature in the oven should be around 180 degrees. Keep pita bread for 2-3 minutes.
6. As soon as the cake starts to blush, we take it out and rinse it with water. This can be done simply under the tap.
7. Put the wet pita bread in a pile, cover with a towel and let it lie down for half an hour. Then you can store it in a bag, where they will become even softer and more pliable.
Uzbek lavash at home - a recipe under the lid
A feature of Uzbek lavash is the method of baking under the lid, which allows you to get a moist, non-crushing crumb. Prepared with the addition of yeast, in the oven. Baking is lush, airy, an excellent replacement for traditional bread. The amount of products for one medium-sized cake.
Ingredients
80 grams of water;
80 grams of milk;
2 tablespoons of oil;
1 tsp dry yeast;
250 grams of flour.
You will also need a frying pan with a lid in which we will bake Uzbek lavash.
Cooking
1. Mix all the dry ingredients, do not forget to sift the flour.
2. We heat the water with milk, add the flour mixture, knead the dough. At the end, add oil. Form into a ball and place in a greased bowl. Cover with a napkin and keep an hour in a warm room.
3. We take out the dough, form a cake with our hands so that the middle is thinner than the edges. They should be in the form of a thickened roller.
4. Put a piece of foil on the bottom of the pan, then our cake. Poke holes in the center with a fork. We cover the form with a towel, let the workpiece stand for another half hour.
5. Mix the egg with a fork, grease the cake. This must be done carefully so that it does not fall. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
6. Close the form with a lid and send the cake to the oven. We bake at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes. If the pita bread is poorly fried, then at the end you can hold the form without a lid, but not for long. Just a minute.
When kneading thin pita bread, milk whey can be used instead of water. The dough will be tastier and more tender.
Lavash tastes better if the dough is salty. Therefore, salt can be added a little more than indicated in the recipe.
Thick pita bread in the form of flat cakes will be tastier if, before planting in the oven, grease the surface with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Similarly, you can use any seeds, nuts, taste and aroma will only benefit from this.
Don't have a large pan for frying pita bread? You can also use a small one, laying the cake on the sides of the dishes. But in this case, the middle will brown a little more.
Thick lavash It will be especially fragrant and tasty if immediately after baking it is smeared with a piece of butter or melted butter. The same technique can be used if the product has dried out in the oven.
When baking thick pita bread, it is not necessary to use only wheat flour. If you want to add variety or make the cake healthier, you can add rye flour(no more than 40%, since it does not contain gluten), a little ground oatmeal or bran. By the way, you can sprinkle pita bread with bran, like sesame seeds.
Lavash at home
There is not always a desire to eat traditional bread, so we recommend that you give preference to lavash. This is a symbol of Georgia, which you can cook yourself, thereby adding variety to your family's daily diet. Lavash at home, so you will not be able to cook. Therefore, we invite you to take advantage of our simple advice and try to repeat the taste is famous dish.
Make your own lava at home
It should be noted that lavash is usually made using a technology that has been proven for centuries. It is baked from flour, and in order to make pita bread tasty, it is necessary to cook it on huge hot stones. It is worth noting that this dish exists independently, but very often it is one of the components of very tasty dishes. So, often people cook pita bread in order to later use it when making shawarma.
Making your own lavash We suggest you make pita bread according to traditional recipe and bake it in a conventional 21st century kitchen. To make pita bread at home, you will need following products for its preparation. The set of ingredients is very simple, the most difficult thing is the baking technology, but with our tips, you can easily cope with this task. So, in order to surprise your family and delight your guests, you will need 250 g of whey or water, at your discretion.
You need to buy flour, 500 g is enough for you, as well as a package of yeast. Yeast must be dry. It is very important. You will need 1 sachet. To make it easier for you to navigate, it is worth noting that one sachet contains 8 g of dry matter. Please note that in Asia this dish is often desalted. Therefore, the addition of salt and spices is up to you.
What to do with lavash dough
If you want to receive classic taste, then it will be better if you do not add salt, after all. It is not difficult to cook pita bread at home, but you will need maximum attention and skill. The next stage, after acquiring all necessary products, will be cooking them. You must thoroughly mix all the available ingredients and get a dense dough.
What to do with lavash dough Moreover, the dough should be not only dense, but also elastic. This is very important nuance. Then it is necessary to divide the test into equal parts. We recommend that you make small balls of each part, let the diameter of each ball be about 7 cm. Then leave the dough covered under a thin towel. This is necessary so that it can rise and acquire the required dimensions.
Cook at home like a pro
Do-it-yourself lavash recipe must be followed very precisely, only then you will be able to get the classic taste of lavash. After the dough has risen, you will need to knead each of the balls separately, and then form a cake from each of them, and its thickness should not exceed 5 mm. It is very important.
You can make the cake yourself if you use the fist of your hand to do so. Yes, it's very simple. To do this, you just have to roll out each of the balls as thin as possible, and then, using a hand bent into a fist, begin to stretch the cake, which must first be rolled out with a rolling pin as thin as possible. But do not overdo it so that it does not tear when pulling it with your fist.
Do-it-yourself homemade pita bread recipe provides for a certain baking technology. You can independently choose the technology of baking this dish. You can use a hot pot. If you don’t have such a device at home, then a familiar frying pan will do. Please note that you do not need fat for baking pita bread.
Therefore, this dish is considered to be dietary, and it is great for a diet. Each side of the pita should be baked for no more than 15 seconds. If you overdo it, then the taste of pita bread will be different. When the pita bread is cooked, it must be put for some time between two slightly moistened napkins. This is done so that the dish cannot dry out, and also so as not to lose in size. The coolness will not allow the pita bread to decrease in size.
Proper preparation depends on practice
After the dish has cooled, it can be eaten or used in other dishes. Lavash is often used as bread. This is a great replacement for this product. Lavash has less fat, and therefore this product is considered more acceptable for people who care about their health. Already a familiar dish in our country can be considered such a dish as shawarma in pita bread, her photo can be found at any diner.
Properly cook pita bread at home This great way eat on the road. But ask yourself if you know the quality of all the products that are used in the preparation of shawarma and whether the chef observes all hygiene rules when preparing it. You cannot be sure of the professionalism of the chef. Therefore, you can cook shawarma in pita bread yourself. This dish is very compact and therefore it will be very convenient to take it to work. You already know how to cook pita bread at home, now it's time to learn how to cook a dish from it.
To cook shawarma. You will need to bake pita bread first, and then purchase the following products. You will need to buy lamb or chicken. As a meat component, these ingredients are perfect. You also need to purchase mayonnaise and ketchup. These sauces can be prepared on your own, if you do not want to spend time on this, then buy them ready-made.
Lavash dough must be special Shawarma is prepared with various additives. It can be mushrooms or corn. You will determine this according to your taste preferences. So that the dish does not seem overly saturated, it is necessary to include a sufficient amount of vegetables in it. Let it be cabbage and cucumber. Cucumber can be taken both fresh and pickled.
Bake shawarma in the oven
You can give shawarma a unique taste if you decide to make a marinade. To do this, you need to mix paprika, garlic and cinnamon, and then add nutmeg, all this should be supplemented with vinegar. After the marinade is ready, you can start cooking the meat. It is preferable to choose lamb.
Cooking lavash in the oven It must be cut into narrow pieces and pour all this with a pre-prepared marinade. The meat should be marinated all night, In the morning it should be fried and baked in the oven. After that, finely chop the lamb and put it in pita bread. Top with additives, vegetables, and preferred sauces. Then just roll pita bread into a roll and enjoy the unique taste of shawarma.
You know how to bake pita bread yourself, to understand how it is done in Georgia, you can watch the video. Lavash is a symbol traditional cuisine, which can be prepared by any hostess. Bon appetit!
Video
Lavash is an integral part oriental dishes, which was quickly adopted and popularized by fast food. After all, it is prepared very simply and very easily, and the ingredients for its manufacture are available to everyone.
It has become an indispensable part of shawarma, burrito, and also as an addition to salads and kebabs.
Lavash recipes
There are several options for making pita bread, depending on the purpose for which you need it. There are two types of lavash: thin Armenian and more magnificent - Georgian.
Armenian lavash
Despite the fact that such pita bread can be baked in the oven, it is best to cook it in a pan with a non-stick coating.
Ingredients:
Three glasses wheat flour, cup hot water, half a teaspoon of salt.
Cooking:
- Dilute salt in water.
- Flour should be poured in a slide on the table and, making a recess in the middle, gradually pour in water.
- Now it's time to knead the dough until smooth.
- We let it brew for half an hour under a damp towel.
- At this time, it is necessary to lightly grease the pan with vegetable oil and warm it over a fire.
- From the dough, tear off pieces the size of egg and roll into cakes.
- Fry the cakes in a pan until spots and bubbles appear.
- Then turn and fry for another half an hour.
- Ready cakes should be thrown onto a dry wooden board and sprinkled with water.
- Then they can be stacked like pancakes.
Lavash on kefir
More dense and lush pita bread.
Ingredients:
A glass of kefir, two and a half glasses of flour, a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of vegetable oil, half a teaspoon of soda.
Cooking:
- Kefir should be poured into a bowl.
- Add salt, soda and oil.
- Sift the flour, gradually adding it there, and then knead the dough.
- Cover the resulting dough with a towel and let stand for half an hour.
- Then punch down and cut into small pieces.
- Roll out the pieces into cakes no thicker than a millimeter.
- Heat a frying pan without oil over medium heat.
- Lavash on each side bake for fifteen seconds.
Such pita breads are good for stuffing various fillings and subsequent baking in the oven.
Georgian lavash
This lavash is more like bread and is served as an accompaniment to dishes.
Ingredients:
Art. a spoonful of dry yeast, six hundred grams of flour, three hundred and fifty milliliters of water, a teaspoon of salt, three tbsp. tablespoons of vegetable oil, a teaspoon of sugar.
Cooking:
- Sugar and salt should be added to the yeast dissolved in water.
- Sift flour and knead the dough.
- Cover it with a towel and put it in a warm place for forty minutes.
- Moisten your hands in oil and knead the dough for seven minutes, put it back in a warm place for twenty minutes.
- Grease the baking sheet vegetable oil. Roll the dough in oil and form a bun.
- Flatten, giving the kolobok the shape of a pita bread, form the sides.
- Let the dough rest for a couple of minutes.
- Moisten the surface of the pita bread with water with your hands and send it to the oven, heated to two hundred degrees.
- Bake pita bread for half an hour.
Lavash will be tasty, tender and lush.
- Be sure to let the dough rest - it will turn out elastic and will roll out well.
- To prevent the dough from puffing up and frying evenly, press it into the pan with a wooden spatula.
- As a side dish, you can use meat, vegetables, rice, herbs, fish, caviar and so on.
- Lavash rolls can be served in any form. You can also make from pita bread puff pies and cakes.
Video lessons
Ingredients:
- flour - 600 g
- ayran or water - 300 - 400 g
- egg - 1 pc (can be without eggs at all)
- salt to taste
- vegetable oil - 3-4 tbsp.
- mix everything
- knead the dough
- divide into balls, roll out as thin as possible
- bake in a dry pan
Surely many will think, why post a recipe for ordinary pita bread? After all, it consists of flour, water and salt! What to do there?)))) If you live in the Caucasus, then you may not need this recipe! Your mother or grandmother will tell you better than all Internet bloggers how to make this cake! However, I am sure that many who tried to make thin pita bread at home faced difficulties.
Difficulty number one - what kind of dough to make steep or soft? If you make a cool one, then it will be very difficult to roll it out thinly! From here follows the next question.
How to make really soft and elastic dough so that it is easy to roll it out? It is to this issue that I will devote this article. I will base on my experience. If someone knows a better and more correct way - write in the comments!
Also, I want to note that in this recipe, of course, there is no question of any yeast or baking powder. The effect that you see in the photo (bubbles) occurs by itself when the dough is well kneaded and rested for a while. So let's get started cooking. thin lavash at home.
Let's try! Nothing complicated, but how delicious, especially fresh, still crispy! You rack your brains and nerves over some recipes, translate expensive ingredients, but it turns out, some mediocre garbage))) This is another matter! The only point is that you need to store them in plastic bag not to dry out. Some even spray them with water before putting them in the bag. I didn't have to do this. Bon Appetit everyone! 
