Pizza on Flatbread; Yeah, About That.

I've been experimenting with different types of "bread" bases for pizza making as options for real pizza dough. When I did the Tortilla experiment, it came out pretty well...not excellent, but pretty well. While watching television, a commercial for Subway came on and suggested that flatbread can be your bread, instead of one of their rolls. Flatbread is unleavened bread made from water, flour and salt; no yeast, nothing to feed the yeast such as oil or honey; or a sourdough culture. A few typical examples are pita, tortilla, fry bread, pane, and roti; there are many more depending on what region of the world you're living in, or visiting.

Since I was going grocery shopping in Cortez the next day, flatbread was added to the list, along with any other ingredients I might need.  Once again I was going to keep it simple and basic; following the list of ingredients from the tortilla experiment:

Ingredients:

1 (10 – 12 inch) flatbread
½ tsp olive oil
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, divided in half
½ cup pizza sauce

I followed the exact same preparation instructions, but changed two of the actual cooking steps.   Flatbread is much thicker than a tortilla, so there was no need to preheat a pizza pan and place the flatbread on it; it went directly onto the oven rack which had preheated in the oven anyway.  The second item changed was the cooking time; 7 minutes and the bottom was still not browned; 10 minutes was just right.

The bottom was nicely browned with darker lines from the rack; the crust edges were airy and crispy.  However, the rest of the flatbread was, well I kind of associate it with "lightly toasted bread", very bready on the inside and basically soft.  You see, while the bottom had browned, it had not crisped up like the edges had, so each piece of the pizza was floppy.  The overall taste was good though, but that was due more to the oil, sauce and cheese than the flatbread itself.



I have to say that I would definitely try a flatbread pizza if I saw it offered at a restaurant; how else am I to compare?  If it is better than my experiment was, I certainly would pick brains to find out how it was done; what was the restaurant's secrets.  Now I just have to get a hold of my friend Anita, and get some of her homemade Navajo Fry Bread; can you guess what I'll be making?

Mary Cokenour