Flatbreads , how many are there in this world?

‘The picture that inspired us at Wrapid to look at flatbread from around the world’.

Bhasker (the other founder) known as Turban, ‘cause he’s The Head Wrap, fought hard to get authentic flatbreads into our business from our spinach tortilla, desert khobie breads to the infamous naan breads. We met many ethnic bakers and tasted loads of breads.



Try the Wrapid range - from the hard work protecting our recipes to the need to run our little business on ethical grounds , treating suppliers and customers the same, the taste we hope you agree says it all.

Now for all those who thought flatbread was only Mexican tortilla’s or burrito’s and of course knew that naan and chapatti is too, here’s the education for all the flatbreads we know about…

Stephen Minall

The Maven

Founder/Slave/ Chief Worrier!



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• Aish Mehahra (Egypt)—made with 5 -10% ground fenugreek seeds and maize

• Arepa (Colombia, Venezuela)—flat, unleavened patty made of cornmeal

• Bammy (Jamaica)—made from grated cassava root or cassava root flour and salt

• Barbari bread (Persian)

• Bazlama (Turkey)—made from wheat flour, drinking water, table salt

• Bhakri (India)—made primarily with oil, water, and flour

• Bhatura (India)—typically made with white flour, yogurt, ghee or oil, and yeast

• Bindaeddeok (Korea)—made from mung bean flour

• Bing (China)

• Bolanee (Stuffed flatbread) (Afghanistan)—a vegetarian flat-bread dish

• Casava (Haiti)—made from manioc (cassava root)

• Casabe (South America, Caribbean)—made from bitter cassava root

• Cachapa (Venezuela, Caribbean)—made from yellow maize, cheese

• Chapati (India, Pakistan)—made from atta flour (whole grain durum wheat), water, and salt

• Crêpe (France)—very thin, cooked pancake usually made from wheat flour

• Crisp bread (Nordic)—consists of wholemeal rye flour, salt, and water

• Dosa or dosai (southern India)—made from rice flour, urad flour and salt

• Flammkuchen (north east France)—thin bread dough rolled out in a circle or a rectangle and covered with onions and bacon

• Flatbread (North America) Made from maize flour in traditional style of early Native Americans; now topped with ground beef, vegetables, beans and cheese

• Flatbrød (Norway)—barley flour, salt, and water

• Flatkaka (Iceland)—rye flatbread

• Focaccia (Italy)

• Ftira (Malta)

• Gözleme (Turkey)—folded over a savory filling and fried on a griddle

• Green onion pancake (China) —made with oil and minced scallions (green onions)

• Harsha (Morocco) —fried buttery bread made of semolina

• Hoggan (Cornwall) —made from barley flour containing pieces of green pork and potato

• Injera (Ethiopia, Eritrea)—teff flour and water

• Khanom buang (Thailand)—rice flour

• Khubz (Arabian Peninsula)

• Laobing (China)

• Lavash (Persia and Armenia)

• Laxoox (Somalia)

• Lefse (Nordic)—potato, milk or cream (sometimes lard) and flour—cooked on a griddle

• Luchi (East India and Bangladesh)—fine maida flour with water and a spoonful of ghee

• Malooga (Yemeni)—water, yeast, salt, and flour

• Mandezi (Africa)

• Markook (Levant)

• Matzo (Jewish)—white plain flour and water

• Naan (Central and South Asia)

• Ngome (Mali)—millet, water and vegetable oil

• Opłatek (Poland)

• Pancake any of a variety of breads cooked in a frying pan.

• Pan de Semita (Mexico)

• Pane carasau (Sardinia)

• Papadum (India, Sri Lanka)—Salt, peanut oil, flour

• Paratha (India, Sri Lanka)

• Pesarattu (southern India)—made from whole moong, with green chillis, ginger, salt, and cumin

• Piadina (Italy)—white flour, lard (or olive oil), salt and water

• Pita (Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East)

o Pide (Turkey)

o Pitta (Greece)

• Pizza is based on flatbread but normally contains yeast

• Podpłomyk (Poland)

• Pol roti (Sri Lanka)—made from scraped coconut and wheat or kurakkan flour, with green chillis and onion

• Puri (India, Pakistan)—prepared from dough of atta and salt

• Roast paan (Sri Lanka)—bread mixture baked in a flat mold, producing, literally, a 'flat' bread

• Roti (Central and South Asia)

o Roti canai (Malaysia)

• Rieska (Finland)

• Sacramental bread (Roman Catholic and some Protestants)

• Sanchuisanda—baked in ashes[2]

• Sangak (Persia)

• Sheermal (Persia)

• Taftoon Bread (Persia)

• Torta, Spain

o Torta de Gazpacho

• Tortilla (Mexico, Central and South America)

o Tortilla de Rescoldo (Chile)—wheat flour based bread, traditionally baked in the coals of a campfire

• Tunnbröd (Sweden)—any combination of wheat, barley and rye

• Uttapam (South India)—thick pancake made of rice and urad

• Yufka (Turkey)—wheat flour, water and table salt

Hamburgers or Wraps, facts

“The sandwich that has taken over the world, the hamburger two pieces of baked dough with diced and chopped cooked beef in between”

So what effect other than excusing it for obesity does this hot snack have on our planet, well here’s a few facts from the guys behind Wrapid

• Most hamburger meat about 80% is processed 2 years prior to being served.

• 60% of hamburgers are not beef alone but fillers like soya to wheat to other parts of other animals

• Today there are 1.4 million cows being farmed worldwide for meat, how do we feed them. 30% never see a field but are kept in pens fed on grain, cereals and protein pellets to fatten them faster. All beef cattle get hormones to antibiotics fed them daily to keep them healthy for slaughter.

• If you take the water for crops to grow the feed for cattle plus processing requirements it takes 15,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of hamburger (about 4/5 hamburger patties)

• The flour needed for the buns takes thousands of tonnes or litres of chemicals to kill the insects and “bugs” that harm wheat. Over 10 gallons of diesel are used to produce every 1000 hamburger buns. 40 million are eaten every day in the USA, you do the sums!!

• The cheese used is mostly processed in the fast food brands hamburgers that is, strangely this cheese is mostly vegetable oil, water and chemical food colouring with salts and sugar to help it melt faster and look orange.

• Sesame seeds are added to make the bun look fresher or healthier or freshly baked maybe, no one remembers who first added these or why; but they are grown only in very warm countries like Venezuela, adding cost and food miles to a western consumed burger.

• Pepper used in the recipes also comes from the peppercorn, dried and mostly grown in countries like India.

• Fast Food has changed.

• Now don’t get me started on the packaging for hamburger meals, recycled or not we cut down 27,000 trees a day worldwide just to make toilet paper! But folks we have to eat and there eliminate the waste.

We are not against the hamburger but more vegetables, more sauces and using flatbreads which use less energy, less flour and less cooking time have to help the planet a little. Not using as many cows by creating interesting and varied ingredients inside Wrapid wraps, like real cheese, chilli’s, bok choy, chicken to roasted vegetables to dark meat from a chicken in our Tikka wraps (rarely used these days) has to help the chemical over load found in a hamburger. Add in the spinach or Omega 3 in our wraps and we believe we help just a little bit. Besides the tasting good (what’s the point of boring fast food) we try to do our best to ease the burden on Mother Earth.

A burrito a day keeps the blues away, well at least try one and test this theory yourselves.



Stephen (The Maven and Founder)

Water Water Everywhere...

The UK drought can only be an annual occurrence unless we understand how much water we use or waste and all of us do one or two simple things to change our wasteful habits. For those of us facing water meters then these simple techniques will achieve both. Techniques can save us all money and help the drought situation now.


Facts:

246 litres of water is used between cattle feed manufacturer, cooling and cleaning /making milk containers, is amount is used up to make one glass of milk

Action:

Drink less cappuccino’s and consider milk's drain on our water table at all times. Think how much water a Starbucks must use!

Fact:

The kitchen and bathroom tap on average uses 20 litres of water in one minute if left running.

Action:

Do not run the tap to wash dishes, vegetables or even to brush your teeth. If you wait for the water to cool to get a glass to drink, fill a jug and keep in the fridge

Fact:

Average UK household uses between 500- 700 litres of fresh water per day, that’s about 4 bathtubs full. That’s over 250,000 litres per year. The shower alone if you take a 12-15 minute shower uses 25 litres per minute!

Action:

Take quicker showers, run the water into a bucket if you wait for the shower water to heat up. Use the bucket from your shower to water pot plants or water the garden, or use it to boil water for cooking or making tea/coffee

Fact:

We all flush too many times, 10 litres each time is used. Consult your partner or family, new household rule could be "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown wash it down!" You can of course use the bucket from the shower and dump into the toilet pan to dispose of the waste. This simple technique helps save water.

Fact:

The Earth has only 1% of it's water suitable for drinking , available at any given time.

Action:

With this fact pass the word at your offices or in your work place, fix drips, don't leave water running and think water saving as part of your personal and work objectives.

Fact: Cooking/Eating is becoming a cultural joy with all the programs on TV, fresh food in our markets and shops.

This all takes water to produce, clean or manufacture. Don't add to the water count by increasing water use at home in the cooking preparation processes.

Action:

Steam vegetables whenever you can, if you boil, do not cover the vegetables entirely. If you have left over water from vegetables or potatoes especially after cooking, leave it to cool DO NOT dump down the sink. Use the cold vegetable water to add to smoothies, mix with water for a great vitamin enriched and nutritional drink or simply pour onto your potted plants, watch them thrive with this enriched water, better than fertilisers!

Fact:

50,000 litres of water is lost in the average family bathroom in the UK

Action:

Hold a family meeting consider (or even an office meeting to pass on these techniques) examine the families tap policy re running them to wash faces, clean teeth and the longer showers discussed . Can these showers be shortened by a fraction. 2 x fifteen minute showers can use over 50 litres per day remember. Can you all live with if it's yellow let it mellow? Challenge your family to reduce the 250,000 litre annual usage to be cut by 10% (25,000 litres)

There are a number of small things that all add up.

Fact:

It would only take 10% of us to follow all these actions to save millions of gallons or litres of water per annum.

Use the internet to search for water saving ideas from adding a brick to the water cistern to grey water uses...go on just do something and do it fast.

FAST FOOD

BRUSSELS, April 2, 2012 (press release) – Eating fast food will increase your risk of suffering from depression, a new Spanish study has found. Presented in the journal Public Health Nutrition, the finding shows a correlation between depression and the consumption of fast food, such as hamburgers, pizza and hot dogs, as well as commercial baked goods like croissants and doughnuts. Specifically, people eating fast foods and commercial baked goods have a 51% greater chance of developing depression than those who do not consume such foods.Researchers from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria at the University of Granada also identified a dose-response association. 'The more fast food you consume, the greater the risk of depression,' the Scientific Information and News Service (SINC) quotes lead author Almudena Sánchez-Villegas of University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria as saying.Subjects who consumed the most fast food and commercial baked goods are usually single, maintain poor dietary habits and are not very active. Other characteristics of these subjects are that they smoke and work more than 45 hours each week.The team says the results are equally conclusive with respect to the consumption of commercial baked goods. 'Even eating small quantities is linked to a significantly higher chance of developing depression,' says Dr Sánchez-Villegas.The study used data from the SUN project of the University of Navarra Diet and Lifestyle Tracking programme. All 8 964 subjects taking part had never been diagnosed with depression and they had not been prescribed any antidepressants. The researchers assessed the participants for a period of around six months. A total of 493 subjects either were diagnosed with depression or were prescribed with antidepressants.The results of this latest study further substantiate the results of the SUN project in 2011, which were published in the journal PLoS ONE. Of the 12 059 subjects evaluated by the SUN project team, 657 new cases of depression were identified. They found a 42% jump in the risk linked to fast food, which is lower than what the current study discovered.'Although more studies are necessary, the intake of this type of food should be controlled because of its implications on both health (obesity, cardiovascular diseases) and mental well-being,' Dr Sánchez-Villegas says.More than 121 million people around the globe are impacted by depression. Experts believe this high number makes depression one of the primary global causes of disability-adjusted life years. Countries with low- and medium-income levels report depression as being the leading cause of disability-adjusted life years.But not enough information about how diet influences developing depressive disorders exists. Studies in the past indicated that certain nutrients have a preventive role, such as omega-3 fatty acids, group B vitamins and olive oil. Data also suggest that a healthy diet, like the popular Mediterranean diet, is linked to a lower risk of developing depression. Well with our healthy ingredients, added omega 3 to our Wrapid range and our nutfree chocolate spreads, guess we were always ahead of the game!