Kids will love making this simple, delicious flatbread recipe from my book, New Favorites for New Cooks: 50 Delicious Recipes for Kids to Make — they can knead it all they want, just like playdough! The longer they knead it, the silkier and smoother the dough becomes. And the result is a puffy, light bread slathered in a tasty buttery spread!
Pair your homemade pan-fried flatbreads with an old-school favorite: The Little Red Hen. In this classic tale, an industrious hen grows, harvests, and mills her own wheat to make bread. Between creating the yummy flatbreads and reading this sweet story,you’ll get the three foundations of food education: new cooking skills, an understanding of where our food comes from, and academic engagement (in this case, literacy). Your kids will be having so much fun creating, tasting, and reading they won’t even know they’re learning.
Cook the Pan-Fried Flatbreads with Spiced Butter with your children, then read The Little Red Hen together. Your little ones will love it and so will you!
PAN-FRIED FLATBREADS WITH SPICED BUTTER
Makes 10 flatbreads
Soft, airy flatbreads are fun to make and even better to eat. There’s a reason so many countries enjoy flatbreads every day — they cook much faster than loaf breads, so they can be whipped up last minute to go along with any meal, and they are made for wrapping, scooping, and sopping up the best, last bits on the plate. With homemade spice butter, they make a great snack all on their own.
Kitchen tools you will need: Measuring cups, measuring spoons, two bowls, small spoon, medium bowl, whisk, wooden spoon, clean kitchen towel, baking sheet, parchment paper, rolling pin, griddle or heavy skillet, spatula, and large plate.
Ingredients
For the Spiced Butter:
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter
- 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika or chile powder
For the Flatbread
- 1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon sugar
- Coarse salt
- 3/4 cup water
- 3 tablespoons Greek yogurt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Preparation
Make the spiced butter:
- Cut the butter into small cubes and set them in a bowl on the counter to soften.
- In a second bowl, combine the salt, turmeric, cumin, and paprika and mix until they are blended. Mix the spices into the softened butter with a small spoon.
Make the flatbread:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the 1 cup all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, baking powder, sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the middle and pour in the water, yogurt, and olive oil. Mix in the wet ingredients with a wooden spoon, then, with clean hands, bring the dough together and form it into a ball.
- Dust 1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour over a cutting board. Put the dough on the cutting board and knead it for 2 minutes. (Work your bread muscles! Press firmly with the heel of your hand into the dough, pushing it away from you.) If the dough sticks to your hands, lightly dust your hands with flour. When the dough is smooth, put it back in the bowl, cover it with a damp clean kitchen towel and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Break off a golf ball-size piece of the dough and roll it into a ball. On a clean cutting board, use a rolling pin to flatten the ball to about a 1/8-inch thickness — about as thick as a quarter. Rotate the bread a half turn after each roll to keep the shape round. If the dough sticks, dust the rolling pin with a pinch of flour. Repeat with the rest of the dough. As the breads are rolled out, set them onto the prepared baking sheet, side by side.
- Heat an ungreased griddle to 350°F (or a heavy skillet to high). Drop a bead of water in the pan; if the water sizzles and evaporates (disappears), the pan is ready.
- Using a spatula, add the breads two or three at a time and cook until a few brown spots appear and small bubbles of air form in the dough, about 1 minute per side. Transfer to a large plate and, once all the breads are fried, turn off the stove.
- Serve the flatbreads warm, with a generous smear of spiced butter and an extra sprinkle of salt.
Note: For gluten-free kids, look for a gluten-free flour mix at your local grocery store.
Learn More About the Books:
New Favorites for New Cooks: 50 Delicious Recipes for Kids to Make
by Carolyn Federman
The Little Red Hen
by Little Golden Books, illustrated by J.P. Miller
FAQs
The story. A hen living on a farm finds some wheat and decides to make bread with it. She asks the other farmyard animals to help her plant it, but they refuse. The hen then harvests and mills the wheat into flour before baking it into bread; at each stage she again asks the animals for help, but they still refuse.
What is the main idea of the Little Red Hen? ›
This lesson taught you the story of the Little Red Hen, which is a folktale about the importance of hard work and the value of helping one another.
What is the moral of the story the little red hen? ›
The moral of the story of Little Red Hen is that “One must work hard to rip overboard and also that one must help others”. The Little Red Hen asks several other animals on the farm to help her collect wheat, harvest it, take it to the mill to be ground and then bake a loaf of bread, but now one helped her.
What did the Little Red Hen find answers to? ›
One day, the Little Red Hen found some grains of wheat on the ground. “Who will help me plant these grains of wheat?” she asked. “Not I,” replied the cat, the dog and the horse.
Why did the Little Red Hen have to make the bread all by herself? ›
She got it grounded into flour and carried the heavy sack all the way back. The exhausted hard-working hen then asked her friends to help her bake the bread. But as expected, all of them replied, “Not I!” So, she baked the bread all by herself.
Why was Little Red Hen sad? ›
Little Red Hen was very sad that her friends didn't want to help, but she knew that her chicks would be able to help again. Together, they were able to knead the dough until it was ready to bake in the oven. When the bread was finished, Horse, Cow, and Pig tried to ask Little Red Hen for some.
What is the summary of the Red hen? ›
The Little Red Hen is the story of a hen who makes her home with a very lazy cat, dog, and mouse. When the hard-working hen discovers grains of wheat in the gar- den, she asks her housemates to help her plant and tend the wheat. When they refuse, she does the chores her- self.
What is the problem in the story "The Little Red Hen"? ›
The moral of Little Red Hen is that you need to help in order to share in the reward of the work. But what else is going on in this story? One person, er chicken, begrudgingly keeps on doing work by themselves and berating others for not helping them.
What is the original story of the Little Red Hen? ›
This classic folktale, Little Red Hen, was a motivational tool used by Bullock. The story is a cautionary tale about how we reap what we sow. When the hen asks a duck, cat, and dog for help planting some wheat, she gets no takers. They won't cut, thresh, or mill the wheat . . . or help bake bread with it, either.
What does Little Red Hen find one day? ›
One day, the Little Red Hen found some grains of wheat on the ground. “Who will help me plant these grains of wheat?” the Little Red Hen asked. So she planted the grains all by herself.
The book seems to promote two central ideas. The first is that when you work hard, it pays off, and you get to reap the benefits of your hard work. The second is that when you don't help someone do something, you can't expect to reap benefits from that thing when it's finished.
What is the solution in the little red hen? ›
The big finish is that when the Hen asks the others if they will help her eat the freshly baked bread, they all say, "I will," only to find that the long-suffering Hen has decided that since she did all the work, she gets to eat all the bread.
What do you think would have happened if they had helped her the little red hen? ›
Q-4 What do you think would have happened if they had helped her ? Ans. If the lamb, the goose and the cat would have helped the hen, they would have got the bread to eat.
Is the little red hen a traditional tale? ›
The Oxford Reading Tree Traditional Tales series is a collection of some of the best known stories from around the world carefully adapted for children to read themselves. The Little Red Hen is based on the well-known Russian folk tale about the benefits of working hard.
What does the hen symbolize in Christianity? ›
The hen symbolizes ideal maternal love and Christian love: she is self-sacrificing, nurturing, protective, and comforting. The chicks, who like human youngsters are precious though inclined to be errant, symbolize the Hebrew people as Jesus is portrayed as having viewed them with respect to his mission.
Why does Jesus compare himself to a mother hen? ›
A mother hen calls her chicks to protect them from predators. Satan is the predator, according to Allis-Pike. "Just as the mother hen literally uses her body to protect her chick's life, Christ literally uses his body to protect his children from spiritual destruction," she said.
What is the original story of the little red hen? ›
This classic folktale, Little Red Hen, was a motivational tool used by Bullock. The story is a cautionary tale about how we reap what we sow. When the hen asks a duck, cat, and dog for help planting some wheat, she gets no takers. They won't cut, thresh, or mill the wheat . . . or help bake bread with it, either.
Why did he cut the stomach of his hen? ›
One day, the farmer began to get greedy. He thought to himself, “If I can get one golden egg every day, imagine how many I can get if I cut open the hen's stomach and take out all the golden eggs at once!” So, the farmer killed the hen and cut open her stomach, hoping to find a stash of golden eggs.
