Potato Flatbread
Apparently, all the dry yeast in the world has disappeared. Or at least, it hasn’t been on my stores’ shelves in months.
Just like I did with tortilla chips, I got crafty and found a way to make a flatbread anyway - with potatoes! Keeping vegans afloat since…forever?
Topped with smoky tempeh bacon and pan-fried brussels sprouts, this flatbread is perfect for nights when you want pizza, but also want something a little different.
*Potato Flatbread Recipe
*1 cup (235 g) mashed russet potato
*2+ tbsp water from boiling potatoes
*2+ tbsp plant-based milk
3/4 cup (120 g) gluten-free flour
*1/3 cup (40 g) tapioca flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
Process
Bring a pot of salted water to boil.
Peel and chop one potato into chunks and boil it for about 10 minutes.
Strain the potatoes over a large bowl or pot. Keep the strained water!
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Smash the boiled potato in a bowl until it’s smooth. Measure 1 cup from it and place that into a large mixing bowl.
Add the liquids and mix thoroughly.
Add the gluten-free flour, tapioca flour, baking powder, salt and pepper. Mix with a spoon until mostly combined - the dough should be piecey.
Use your hands to pull the dough together into one large piece. Then divide the dough into two and gently knead/roll into balls.
Cut four large pieces of parchment paper and spray them lightly with cooking spray.
Place one ball of dough onto a sheet of parchment paper and place a second sheet on top.
*Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough into a rounded rectangle or an oval.
Remove the top paper (but keep it to use later) and place the crust onto a baking sheet, with the bottom paper.
Repeat for the second ball of dough with the other two sheets of parchment paper.
Bake the crusts in the oven for 12 minutes.
After 12 minutes, pull the crusts from the oven. Place the leftover two pieces of paper on top of the crusts and use them to flip the crusts over.
Bake for another 12 minutes so that both sides are evenly cooked.
Notes
Original recipe - Although I tweaked it, the original credit for this recipe goes to Ela Vegan. She is an amazingly creative cook, and I worked from her sweet potato pizza crust for this flatbread. She measures everything by weight, but I still prefer to use measuring cups since everyone has those in their kitchen, as opposed to a food scale.
Potato - You’ve seen how spreadable mashed potatoes are. I figured I could add some gluten-free flour and other ingredients to a mashed potato to make it like a dough product - and I was right!
Potato water - Since the water soaks up some of the starch from the potato as it boils, I wanted to use it to bring the crust together and make it easily malleable.
Plant-based milk - The recipe needs moisture, but I wanted to use something besides more potato water, to keep it from tasting like one big chip. Using plant-based milk mellows out the plain potato flavor. I haven’t tasted a real difference between using sweetened and unsweetened milks for this.
Tapioca flour - This is an easy-to-find binding agent. It operates like cornstarch, without making things so chalky and dry. I’ve been able to find tapioca flour regularly in almost every grocery store during the pandemic, so I didn’t feel like it was that weird of an ingredient to be using in a recipe.
Rolling the dough - By rolling the dough out, pulling it back together and rolling it back out, you create air bubbles in the dough, which will expand in the oven and change the texture of the crust. If your dough does start bubbling in the oven, quickly poke the bubble with a knife and push it back down.
Tempeh Bacon
1 pack tempeh, crumbled
*4 tablespoons vegan Worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp liquid smoke
2 tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp maple syrup
1.5 tablespoons Lawry's Seasoning Salt
Process
Mix the liquids and spices together in a bowl.
Add the tempeh and marinate for at least 15 minutes; it can stay in an air-tight container in the fridge for 2 days.
*Fry the tempeh in a skillet over a medium heat, stirring consistently, until the sauce bubbles and is cooked into the tempeh - 5-8 minutes. Be careful not to burn!
Once the sauce has cooked into the tempeh, remove it from the heat and work it into your dish.
Notes
Vegan Worcestershire - You can skip the vegan Worcestershire if you need to. It adds a nice tang, but isn’t 100% necessary for the dish. It will still taste like delicious, fake bacon without it.
Burning - With the brown sugar in the marinade, it’s easier for it to burn in the pan, so you’ll want to babysit it a bit.
Brussels Sprouts
2 cups Brussels sprouts, sliced thinly
1 small shallot, sliced thinly
1 pinch salt
1 pinch pepper
1 tbsp. olive oil
Process
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat.
When the oil is hot, add the shallots and cook for 2-3 minutes.
Add the Brussels sprouts to the pan and mix into the shallots and oil.
*Pan-fry until the Brussels sprouts are lightly browned and slightly tender, 5-10 minutes. The shallots should be a bit crispy.
Notes
Pan-frying sprouts - You want the sprouts to be a little tender, but you don’t need them to be entirely cooked. They’ll cook more in the oven on the flatbread, but they shouldn’t be cooked to the point of being totally soft.
Flatbread Assembly (2 crusts)
Two potato flatbreads
1 batch tempeh bacon
1 batch pan-fried Brussels sprouts
*1 1/2 cup vegan shredded mozzarella cheese
Dash pepper
Process
Place the flatbreads on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. (I used the same parchment paper from above - waste not, want not, and whatnot).
Divide the tempeh bacon between the flatbreads and spread across evenly, stopping 1 inch from the edge.
Divide the sprouts between the flatbreads, spacing them slightly apart over the tempeh.
*Evenly distribute the shredded mozzarella between the two flatbreads, lightly covering with cheese.
Add a dash of pepper to each flatbread.
Bake for minutes at 425.
Broil for 2-3 minutes to lightly brown the cheese, if needed.
Notes
Light cheese - Because it’s not a pizza. To me, the idea of a flatbread is to highlight each element and show how they work together. Mozzarella is an accent here - something light, mild and creamy to balance the salty tempeh bacon and sharp shallot sprouts.
Welcome to foods and crafts class, kids!
Again, I had to get extra creative in my kitchen to make a dish I wanted, while I was missing something I needed. Thank the universe for potatoes, because this potato-based dough bakes into a crust that is perfectly crispy at the edges, and nice and firm in the center. And it’s an awesome vehicle for the medley (yes, I said “medley”) of textures and flavors on this flatbread, with the smoky-sweet tempeh and earthy Brussels sprouts.