Lavash Crackers

     Lavash is an Armenian flat bread.  It can be baked into a pita-like flat bread or a cracker.  The recipe I used came from my favorite bread book, Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and the recipe was for lavash crackers.  The recipe was pretty straight forward and easy to make.  I topped mine with sesame seeds, Hungarian paprika, kosher salt, and black pepper.  They baked to a crispy, mahogany brown cracker.  Rather than pre-cutting them, I broke them into shards and we had them with roasted red pepper hummus.
     As I have gotten older I have developed a passion for Middle Eastern/Greek cuisine.  I think it was because of my Aunt Louiska.  (My mimi loved unusual names.  Her middle name was Eulahlee.)  My aunt had been married to Greek.  She did not learn much Greek cooking, but she did learn how to make a mean leg of lamb and a wonderful spanakopita.  How could I help but not loving all those wonderful layers of phyllo, salty feta, fresh spinach, and herbs baked into a “pie” - yum!  I did not know her husband as they lived in New York and divorced when I was an infant.  She would tell me the story about living in an apartment and Pete asking the landlord if he could run a flour business from it.  The landlord said sure after all what harm could come from “flowers.”  So Pete opened his flour business making phyllo.  Aunt Louiska said there was flour everywhere.  Neighbors complained to the landlord about the white dust from their apartment; that’s when he realized there was a breakdown in communication and that it was indeed flour and not flowers.