Alan Weiss’ lavosh
Alan Weiss was chef owner of the magic Flute restaurant in Adelaide in the 80s. A memorable restaurant, Weiss was a great mentor in my early days of cooking and remains a close friend to this day. As memorable as Weiss’ restaurant and cooking was his fabulous parties that found the entire Adelaide hospitality industry partying until dawn and beyond…thy were times of great generosity to industry newcomers. AO
500g strong flour
10g fine seas salt
10g caster sugar
60g COLD unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
240g COLD full cream milk
optionalCOLD
egg yolk
poppyseed
equipment
Food processor or Thermo is good if you want to do the poppyseed
a soft paintbrush is perfect
essential pasta machine
Weigh the flour salt and sugar into the mixer bowl and mix together. Add the butter and work in. As soon as the butter is worked in add the milk and as soon as it comes together in the bowl turn off.
Scrape out onto a lightly floured surface and knead into a smooth ball. Flatten out, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least one hour.
When rested using as little flour as possible roll to the last notch on your pasta machine.
Cut in any way that takes your fancy. If you’re up for fancy/tasty brush with egg yolk and then press into the poppy seeds.
Cover baking sheets with baking paper and lay the lavosh about 2 mm apart they do not expand.
pre heat oven to 170°C
Cook until coloured and crisped. They burn easily and remember once the first batch are out of the oven the second and third will cook quicker because the trays will be hot.
tip Rolled the lavosh freezes really well between sheets of baking paper and you can just cook when you want to do cheese. They thaw in about 5 minutes.