Tip – The First – The first bread to hit the skillet is usually not the best. The heat may not be quite as hot as you thought. Or the perfect state may still be a few minutes away. It’s a phenomenon anyone who often flips pancakes or crepes, or fries up anything on the skillet, knows to expect with a relaxed lack of concern.
Tip – Mastering the Hand Flip – As a trial run, put your hand in front of you and flip it palm side up, then back to palm side down. Now in the same way, flip your hand palm side up, gently place a circle of dough on your palm, hover it over the skillet, then flip your hand palm face down, dropping the dough on to the hot surface.
Tip – Quick is Better – You want the heat to be high enough to cook the rounds relatively fast. Lower heat means more time on the skillet, which means tougher bread.
Tip – Temperature is key. It may take more time than you expect for the pan to get hot enough. Adjust the heat up if the bread isn’t making bubbles within about 30 seconds to a minute. Adjust the heat down if parts start charring before the bread has time to cook.
Tip – Two People are nice. And faster. One person can roll out a flatbread while the other cooks one up. When I’m by myself, I like to roll them all out together first and drizzle them with oil, then focus on the cooking
Recommended Tools
I don’t usually recommend so many tools! You may have many of them anyway. Otherwise, you can wing it, at least the first time.
Digital Scale – Making bread is much faster and easier with a digital scale. And it means less things to clean.
Rolling Pin – Use whatever kind of rolling pin feels most comfortable to you. (Or you can flatten the dough into rounds by hand.)
Flexible Dough Scraper – This comes in so handy so often: when scraping dough out of the bowl, dividing the dough into pieces, gently picking up each dough ball to be rolled out, gently prying shaped dough rounds off the table if they begin to stick, scraping leftover dough off the table…
Oil Drizzler – An olive oil spout or decanter
Low Rimmed Cast Iron Skillet or a Griddle is ideal. A sac (sazh) is traditionally used in Turkey (saj in Arabic, also called a tava/tawa).
Spatula – Francesco’s favorite spatula for cooking flatbread is actually a fish spatula. It’s length and curved end make it great for checking how the bread is browning underneath, as well as for flipping, and transferring it to the cooling rack. I think the second best choice is a pancake spatula
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