1 pk Yeast
2 c Warm water
2 tb Sugar
5 1/2 c All purpose flour
2 ts Salt
Lightly oil a bowl for the dough. Mix the yeast, water
and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and
salt and mix until it forms a well-blended but
somewhat soft dough. (resist the temptation to work in
any more flour than absolutely necessary.) Knead the
dough by hand or machine. If by hand, turn it out on a
floured board and work it until it is smooth and
elastic, approximately 10 minutes. If using a dough
hook on an electric mixer, knead the dough at the
slowest speed for about 5 minutes. Pat the dough into
a ball and put it in the oiled bowl. Cover the dough
with a kitchen towel and set it in a warm, draft-free
place to rise until the dough has doubled in bulk,
about 30 to 40 minutes. (A perfect place is a gas
oven with its slight heat given off by the pilot
light; an electric oven, turned on low for no more
than 2 minutes, then turned off, works equally well.)
When the dough has doubled, turn it out on a floured
board, punch it down, and knead it again until there
is no air left in it. Divide the dough into 8 round
mounds, place them on the board, cover again with a
towel, and let rise until almost doubled, about
30-minutes. While the dough is rising, preheat the
oven to 450F. Position a rack as close as possible to
the oven bottom. Flour a 12x15-in baking sheet. When
the 8 mounds of dough have risen, roll them out, one
piece at a time into rectangles about 12x15 inches
(the size of a standard sheet pan) and about as thin
as for a pizza. Puncture the entire surface at
1/2-inch intervals with the tines of a roasting fork.
Bake the breads, one at a time, for 6 to 8 minutes, or
until the tops are lightly browned. Remove each
finished bread to a wire rack to cool and continue
baking the remaining breads until all 8 are finished.
During the baking, if any large bubbles start to puff
up, puncture them immediately with a fork. The bread
in the Middle East is traditionally a type of cracker
bread called lavash (lawasha in Assyrian). This flat
leavened bread is available in grocery stores and
specialty markets and can be eaten as a cracker in the
dry, crisp form in which it comes. However to serve
along with a meal, it is preferable to dampen it so
that it becomes more breadlike. Moisten the lavash,
one cracker at a time, under cold running water,
making sure that both sides are completely wet; place
in a plastic bag for 3 hours, at the end of which time
the bread will be pliable and chewy. Lavash prepared
in this fashion is also used for Aram sandwiches. In
the old country, a lavash bread would bake in a clay
bottomed oven in 2 to 3 minutes. You can get much the
same result baking on a ceramic baking tile or
directly on the floor of a gas oven.
