By any other name — flatbread!

Perhaps no one food conjures more varied images than flatbread.

“Almost every culture makes some sort of flatbread,” said Paul Drowns, community cooking educator at the St. Mary’s Nutrition Center on Bates Street in Lewiston.

Here in the Northeast, flatbreads have been synonymous with breakfast — and sweetness. In many cases they’re called pancakes or hotcakes or flapjacks. They’re usually made from a thick batter, cooked on a flat griddle or in a cast iron pan, and in Maine often sprinkled with blueberries during the cooking process and served with gobs of butter and Maine maple syrup.

A frequent variation — honoring Lewiston-Auburn’s rich French-Canadian heritage — are crepes. Made from a thinner batter than pancakes, the finished products are today often rolled around a variety of items — everything from jams and spreads to vegetables and meats — and served with various accoutrements, from warm sauces to whipped cream.

The Italians make focaccia, a thick, savory, baked flatbread, while our Spanish neighbors brought us tortillas in which to wrap meats, beans, cheese and vegetables.

Indian cultures make naan, a puffy flatbread cooked on the side of a tandoor, a conical or cylindrically shaped oven that is usually made of clay; Asian cultures make a pan-fried flatbread that is also often wrapped around savory meats and vegetables.

“Historically, migrant and nomadic people relied on flatbread” as a dietary staple, according to Drowns. Flatbreads were developed because “people were on the move, and they couldn’t wait for the bread to rise.”

Such breads were also easy to transport and easy to make. “You can cook flatbread on a heated rock or over a fire,” said Drowns, adding, “There was no need to carry an oven.”

Buckwheat is a standard ingredient in some flatbreads. It came from Africa, Drowns said, and is still used in many European countries as well as the United States.

According to Father Paul Dumais, who is currently with parishes in Jay and Farmington, a traditional Tartary buckwheat – a unique golden, yellowish variety with a green hue — is grown in northern Maine and Maritime Canada. “Here in Maine,” said Dumais, “there are only two producers, and one of these is my family.”

One use for that buckwheat is ployes, said Dumais, “a baking powder-based flatbread made on a hot griddle.” It’s only cooked on one side, and is full of “tiny little holes, called eyes,” he said, with the more holes, the fluffier the ployes.

Dumais said a ploye “is not a breakfast pancake, but a table bread, or a flatbread, that is traditionally served with beans or stew up in northern Maine and the St. John River Valley.”

Ployes are not just a nutritional food, but a “heritage food,” said Dumais. “It was the everyday bread for French Canadians in Maine, and distinctive in that it is usually 7 to 8 inches across, typically not flipped over and generally made to order by somebody’s grandmother.”

In fact, Dumais said his family has developed “Golden Buckwheat Flatbread Mix, a ready-made flatbread product — a ‘quick ployes’ — produced exclusively for food pantries . . . (because it is a) nutritionally dense, high protein, low glycemic food.”

Earlier this year, Drowns brought Dumais to St. Mary’s Nutrition Center to demonstrate his ploye-making techniques. At that same session, Hibo Omer of Lewiston demonstrated her technique for making injera.

“Injera is a type of ploye,” but different in that it is “cooked small and covered, and is similar to sourdough,” said Omer.

There is a natural fermentation process that is necessary in the making of injera, Drowns explained. Omer added: “You have to have a starter, some injera dough, to start the fermentation.”

Omer generally reserves about a cup and a half of the dough from each batch to use as her new starter. “I have to keep making injera every week, so that the starter doesn’t spoil,” she said, describing the flavor of injera as “addicting.”

“I used to go to Boston to get injera,” said Omer, but she learned to make it “out of necessity and by trial and error” when she came to the United States. “It’s a very secret process,” she added, smiling and later adding that injera starter can nowadays be purchased.

Sometimes Omer uses teff, an ancient, extremely fine grain that originated in Ethiopia, to make her injera. “Teff is expensive, so sometimes I also use a regular all-purpose flour,” she said.

“Somali injera is different than Ethiopian injera,” Omer noted. “Ethiopian injera is about 18 inches long and maybe a quarter-inch thick. . . . It’s spongy (but still) with the sourdough taste.”

As with other flatbreads, injera can be served with many different foods. “There is no limit,” said Omer. “In Ethiopia, food is served on top of injera. . . . We put two or three different dishes on top of it, and more around the plate.”

She noted that dining in Ethiopia is also communal, “so everyone is eating from (the same) huge plate. . . . It’s an African plate. It won’t go away.”

Drowns said he was pleased to bring a demonstration of flatbreads to St. Mary’s Nutrition Center. “Most of my life has been about food: Cooking, catching, selling and eating. (And although) my passport is American, my stomach has been enjoying global cuisine for my entire life,” he said.

His motivation behind bringing the flatbread demonstration to Lewiston grew out of wanting “to find a way to preserve food traditions,” he said. In that vein, he has shared his own recipe for gazpachos manchegos, a shepherd’s stew and flatbread. (See recipe with this story.)

Gazpachos manchegos

(Shepherd’s stew from La Mancha)

Serves 2

Ingredients:

For the bread

2 1/4 cup flour, plus more for the work surface

1/2 cup water, or more as necessary

A pinch of flaky sea salt

Extra virgin olive oil for the baking sheet

For the stew

1/2 rabbit or hare, cut into pieces

1 partridge or small chicken, cut into pieces

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

6 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and trimmed

1 onion, chopped

1 green or red pepper, cubed

2 sprigs of thyme

1 fresh or 3 dried bay leaves

2 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled and cubed

1 tablespoon of smoked Spanish pimento or paprika

A pinch of saffron or 1 teaspoon of ground turmeric

Method:

For the bread:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift the flour into a large bowl and then add the salt and 1/2 cup of water. Knead the ingredients into a smooth dough, adding a little more water if necessary in order to make the dough more pliable.

Divide the dough into 3 pieces and form each piece into a ball.

On a floured work surface, roll each ball of dough into a round about 1/8 inch thick.

Place the rounds on an oiled baking sheet and bake them until they begin to brown, or about 25 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack and tear 2 of them up into small pieces before they become hard and dry.

Wrap the 3rd in a clean kitchen towel to keep it fresh.

For the stew:

Heat the oil in a cazuela or large cast iron skillet and fry the garlic until golden. Remove garlic and set it aside.

Season the rabbit and partridge or chicken with salt and pepper, and brown the meat on all sides.

Add the onion, peppers, thyme and bay leaf to the meat and continue frying for another 2 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, pimento and saffron, and cook for 5 minutes longer.

Cut the reserved garlic cloves in half lengthwise and return them to the pan.

Add just enough water to cover the meat and then simmer the stew for 30 minutes.

Add the torn-up pieces of bread and continue cooking until the bread has softened and the stew has thickened, about 5 to 10 minutes.

Serve the stew on top of the reserved bread.

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