This Flavorful Flatbread Dough Stretches With Ease
Use it for your weeknight pizzas.
Bubbly, chewy flatbread are the perfect for piling on pizza toppings or scooping up curries, and they’re just as alluring slathered simply with olive oil and flaky salt. But a good recipe can be hard to come by. Recipes that use high-gluten bread flour give the breads a chewy texture with their high protein content, but the dough itself can be stubborn, resistant and hard to stretch. All-purpose flour varieties are softer, but I always miss the characteristic chew of the former. Our Flatbread (Pizza) Dough, however, is the best of both worlds: You get a soft yet chewy texture from an easy-to-stretch dough.
Yogurt’s role
Our flatbread is made with just six ingredients, and you won’t be surprised by the core four: bread flour, water, salt, and yeast. A smidge of honey is added for a touch of sweetness, but the real celebrity cameo is a heap of Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt plays a crucial role in the texture of this flatbread. The acid tenderizes by interfering with the gluten in the dough as it rests, so it stretches easily without springing back. Using high-gluten flour allows for a balanced texture, so that the dough doesn’t become too tender; it still holds onto its chewy properties.
Our recipe calls for whole-milk Greek-style yogurt, not the non-fat variety. I’ve made this recipe with both types and while you’ll still get the tenderizing properties with the non-fat stuff, the fat content in whole-milk yogurt gives the bread a lovely spongy richness.
A forgiving flatbread
Aside from this being a perfectly workable dough, what keeps me coming back to this recipe is how forgiving it is. Yeast-raised breads have proofing time as a variable, and that’s rarely the only variable in my day. Timing how fast my bread “doubles in size” doesn’t always go to plan. Let’s just say I’ve had some bulk proofing go a little long when my work meetings run over. A lot of breads have punished me for that, but this one gives me some grace.
This flatbread is a base recipe, so you can top it in any manner of ways. Try a classic marinara with low-moisture mozzarella. Brush the dough with oil and sprinkle it with sesame seeds and salt. Or use it for our Peperoncini and Cheese Pizzas With Garlic-Herb Oil and Pizzas with Pancetta, Fig Jam and Blue Cheese. How fortunate that one flatbread recipe gives you enough dough for two flatbread pizzas.
Baking Tip of the Week: Baking pizza without steel or stone.
I adore a pizza stone. They don’t take up much space and they help your pizza crusts and breads bake up to crispy perfection. Alas, they’re not in every kitchen, but that is OK. Cooking requires creative ingenuity. Don’t let the lack of pizza stone or baking steel keep you from pizza. All you need is a flat-ish, wide surface that can go in the oven. The better the material is at holding heat, the crispier your crust will be.
If you don’t have a baking stone or steel, you have a couple options. Some of our recipes recommend using an overturned baking sheet pan (so the lip doesn’t get in your way) or a rim-less cookie sheet. While these don’t hold onto heat very long, you can preheat them in the hot oven so the dough starts baking the moment it hits the metal. This quick start helps prevent sticking and keeps the overall cooking time short. You can also line them with parchment paper if you want to safeguard against sticking.
If it's available, I prefer to use a cast iron skillet or an oven-safe skillet for making pizza or flatbreads. These hold onto heat better, and can also be preheated in the oven before adding the dough. I find that the bottom crust browns and crisps more evenly than on a sheet pan. The only downside is size—you have to stick to the circumference of the bottom of the pan. So unless you’re making smaller flatbreads for this particular recipe, the sheet pan is the best choice after a baking stone or steel.
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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
