THE NATURAL CHOICE

True to our tradition of 1,100 years, pure-bred Icelandic Lamb grazes freely, acquiring delicate seasonings of berries and herbs. Its premium quality, texture, and delicious flavour make it the natural choice of leading chefs. Look for the Icelandic Lamb Shield, a guarantee of excellence awarded to Icelandic restaurants.

www.icelandiclamb.is for their earthy sweetness, which Dill has also experimented with.

The subtle texture and taste of flatbread also mean it pairs well with many things. Gunnar is of course not content to serve up the most obvious renditions of the classic, and patrons at Dill can expect to see it topped with dehydrated and powdered trout, micro greens, flecks of kelp, and pickled preserves. “Sometimes our toppings have nothing to do with tradition,” Gunnar admits. “But at the end of the day, it goes well with so many things.”

In addition to the taste and texture of flatbread, chef Gunnar is a firm believer that the char itself is an integral part of the flatbread experience. “We char them to the point of burning,” Gunnar says. “It’s definitely how it would have been back in the day.” There is actually some controversy in the culinary world about this. Foodies often talk about sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami as the building blocks of flavour. But the process of carbonisation, of burning, brings out other elements in foods that can’t simply be described by these categories. When done properly, charring food adds a whole other dimension to it.

At the end of the day, the survival of flatbread in both everyday diets and fine dining represents a small miracle for Gunnar: “It’s definitely one of those things that could have died out a long time ago. It’s very simple. When I think about all of the new foods available to us, the selection we have now, it’s amazing how everyone is still eating it. My wife and kids alone go through tonnes of it every week!”

This, then, is the lasting meaning of flatbread. Rather like this island itself, it’s a relic of the past that’s found its own place in the modern world. Humble and unassuming, whether found on grocery store shelves or Michelin Star plates. Just something to ruminate on at your next meal.

Before the introduction of store-bought yeast and chemical leaveners, bread was either unleavened or leavened with sourdough. Some recipes, for instance, call for a remainder of the last batch of bread to be mixed into the dough and left to rise. Then, a portion of the dough would be set aside for the next batch, and the cycle would continue. Some other households would knead out the dough in a wooden trough. Through years of breadmaking, microbes living within the wood itself would develop, and it would be enough to knead out the dough and let it rise in the trough overnight, the wood itself forming the sourdough starter.

Once urbanisation was underway in Iceland, the byproducts of brewing would also be used in baking. Conveniently, many bakeries were also breweries, and they would use the excess malted grains in their baking. Although baking and brewing often went hand-in-hand, it is a relatively new tradition in Iceland, the first commercial bakery only being established in 1834.

Several historical accounts of Iceland make specific mention of the rarity of bread in Iceland. The 15th-century German cartographer, Martin Behaim, took note of this in his 1492 globe Erdapfel, the oldest surviving globe in the world. It briefly notes Iceland as an island inhabited for some time by Christians living in such poverty that they sell their dogs and children to merchants for bread. Needless to say, this was not the case. But the kernel of truth behind this tale is that bread was not an everyday food for the poor.

While we can assume historical flatbreads were not standardised in size, modern flatbreads average 15 cm (6 in) in diameter. There was, however, considerable regional variation, and among these regions, considerable variation among households. There are some accounts, for instance, of a turn-of-the-century flatbread from the Westfjords which was considerably larger, around 25-30 cm (10-12 inches) in diameter, and around a centimetre thick. These were used instead of plates for meals, which would simply be served directly on top of the flatbread. Flatbreads also came in considerably smaller sizes, with palm-sized flatbread for children traditionally known as góma