Popularity of flatbreads booms
Issa Khoury remembers flatbreads being part of the landscape when growing up in Lebanon.
"A family would go to the side of the road, start a pit fire and start putting the dough on a metal sheet," said Khoury, owner of Khoury's Mediterranean Restaurant at 6115 S. Fort Apache Road. "People would be going to work early in the morning, see them and stop by ... roll it up in a sandwich."
It's no wonder that flatbreads are cropping up in restaurants all over, including chains such as Bahama Breeze and fast-food spots such as Dunkin Donuts. They may, after all, be the original convenience food. Khoury said the tradition dates back hundreds of years, the roadside stands originally frequented by people riding horses and donkeys.
At his restaurant, Khoury calls them pizzas, a term more familiar to most Americans -- and yes, there is a pepperoni version, and several are made with tomato sauce. But all are made with the same dough Khoury's uses for its made-fresh-daily pita bread, and baked in a brick oven.
Marco Porceddu, chef de cuisine at Ago at the Hard Rock Hotel, serves both flatbreads and pizzas, and differentiates them this way: The pizzas -- Neapolitan-style, so they're thin -- are round and topped with tomato sauce and usually mozzarella cheese (as well as other toppings), while the flatbreads are oval with no tomato sauce and with cheeses other than mozzarella (and other toppings).
"We have a wood-burning oven; that's the key," Porceddu said, adding that the oven usually hovers around 600 to 650 degrees.
"We keep them pretty much like a bread," Porceddu said of the flatbreads. "We try to keep them nice and light."
Varieties, he said, might include fontina cheese with mushrooms and green onions, fontina and freshly shaved truffle or goat cheese with organic bell peppers and sausage. There's a special flatbread each day.
Olives at Bellagio hasn't been serving flatbreads as long as the Lebanese stands, but executive chef Isaac Carter said they've long been one of the staples of chef/owner Todd English, originally introduced at English's Figs in Boston.
"It's a traditional Italian dish," Carter said, now often eaten as a shared appetizer.
Olives serves seven to 10 varieties of flatbreads daily, Carter said.
"Todd keeps pushing me to do a topless flatbread, where it's just the base dough," Carter said. "It's so good that you want to just drizzle a little olive oil on it, or a little sea salt."
Daniel Boulud Brasserie at Wynn Las Vegas has yet another ethnic take on pizza. The DB Crispy Flatbread, with its caramelized onions, pancetta and goat cheese, is a version of a tarte flambe, a classic Alsatian flatbread, said executive chef Wes Holton.
While Holton said the classic is unleavened, he uses a dough with a little bit of yeast.
"Sometimes when you work with dough with no yeast, it tends to be a little bit chewy," Holton said. "This one is nice and flaky."
Carter said he thinks the growing appeal of flatbreads is that they're a sort of primal food.
"It goes back to eating with your hands and putting down the fork and knife and really enjoying the flavors and sort of the basic instinct of that," he said.
"It's a very simple concept," Holton said. "People familiarize themselves with them."
If you think flatbreads sound a lot like pizzas, you're right. The main difference is they usually aren't topped with tomato sauce, and they tend to be lighter than a pizza, so there's not the "Oh-my-God-I'm-so-full-I-can't-eat-another-bite" effect, as Carter calls it.
"The flatbreads that they cook here, it's like a regular pizza in Italy," Porceddu said.
An Italian native, he complains that most American pizza is too heavy.
BBQ CHICKEN FLATBREAD
1 8-ounce piece flatbread dough (recipe follows)
Olive oil, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
3 to 4 ounces shredded barbecued chicken (recipe follows)
1 peach, sliced
1 to 2 ounces goat cheese
Baby arugula, to taste
Roll dough out on a heated sheet pan or pizza stone. Season lightly with olive oil, salt and pepper. Evenly distribute the barbecued chicken, peach and goat cheese across the dough. Bake at high heat (500 degrees) for 7 to 10 minutes, until crust is golden brown. Remove from oven, cut in 8 slices, sprinkle arugula on top and drizzle with a touch of olive oil.
Flatbread dough:
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
5 tablespoons sugar
1/2 ounce dry yeast
5 cups water
31/2 pounds high-gluten flour
4 tablespoons salt
All-purpose flour, as needed, to roll out dough
Place oil, sugar, yeast and water in a mixing bowl. Mix on slow for 1 to 2 minutes. Add half of the flour and mix until incorporated. Add the remaining flour and mix on slow until incorporated. Mix on medium for 8 minutes. Add salt and mix on medium for an additional 2 minutes. Mix on high for an additional 2 minutes.
Let dough rest in a warm, dry place, in a bowl covered with plastic wrap or a damp towel, for 1 to 2 hours.
Separate dough into 8-ounce pieces. Roll each piece of dough out thin (about 1/8 inch) on a sheet pan dusted with flour (the dough should remain slightly moist), adding flour as necessary. The shape should be roughly 18 by 7 inches.
Makes 10 to 12 pieces of flatbread dough.
Barbecued chicken:
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 2- to 3-pound chicken, split into halves
4 to 5 medium red onions, sliced
1/2 cup chopped garlic
1 cup chopped tomatoes
2 cups bourbon
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 cups balsamic vinegar
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup honey
1 quart veal stock
1 quart chicken stock
2 to 3 sprigs rosemary, chopped
2 to 3 sprigs thyme, chopped
2 dried bay leaves
3 tablespoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons red-pepper flakes
Drizzle olive oil into a medium-sized roasting pan over medium heat. While the oil heats, salt and pepper the chicken halves, seasoning them thoroughly. When the oil starts to show ripples (about 1 to 2 minutes), add chicken, skin side down. Brown the chicken for 3 to 4 minutes. Remove chicken and add onion and garlic and saute them until they reach a nice dark brown. Then add tomato and let the juices thoroughly reduce from the tomato.
Remove pan from heat and add the bourbon, then add the remaining ingredients. Bring the liquid to a boil and return the chicken halves to the pan. Cover the pan, place in oven and bake at 325 degrees for 2 hours.
Remove the chicken (which will be very soft) carefully from the liquid and cool. Remove bay leaves and puree liquid in blender. If the sauce is too thick add a touch of water; if it's too thin, put it in a saucepan and return to the stovetop, cooking over low heat until thick.
Once chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bone (the desired size is large enough to eat with a fork). Return the chicken to the sauce and reserve until needed.
Makes enough for 10 to 12 flatbreads. Freeze remaining chicken, if desired.
-- Recipe from Isaac Carter, Olives at Bellagio
TOMATO FLATBREAD
Dough: Holton suggests buying pizza dough, "then take more time with your toppings"
For the cream:
2 cups creme fraiche
2 ounces goat cheese
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
For the toppings:
Heirloom tomatoes, cut in medium dice and salted to remove excess water
Fontina cheese, cut in small dice
Parsley, macerated in olive oil
Coarse sea salt
For the cream, combine the creme fraiche, goat cheese, flour and salt and mix until smooth.
Roll out dough as thinly as possible. Evenly spread with the cream, leaving a border. Arrange tomatoes and fontina cheese on top. Place on a pizza stone or upside-down sheet tray in a preheated 450-degree oven and bake until golden brown.
After it's golden brown, sprinkle with the parlsey and olive oil. Finish with a sprinkling of coarse sea salt.
-- Recipe from Wes Holton, Daniel Boulud Brasserie
Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.
