Eating more protein? Make these flatbreads.

“Most on-trend recipe we’ve ever published.” That’s how my colleague described these Chili Crisp Cottage Cheese Flatbreads. He wasn’t talking about the chili crisp; he was talking about the protein.

After peaking in the early 2000s thanks to the Atkins diet, protein is back — everybody, it seems, is talking about it, diversifying the ways they get it, and usually trying to figure out ways to eat more of it. You probably have somebody in your life who is thinking about protein this very minute. (For me, it’s my husband.)

And the queen of high-protein ingredients? It’s cottage cheese. So I agree with my colleague; when King Arthur’s Test Kitchen published this recipe a few weeks ago, it felt like perfect timing.

And yet protein wasn’t necessarily top of mind when Sarah Jampel, King Arthur’s Recipe Development and Test Kitchen Manager, started working on these. Instead, she reached for cottage cheese for texture reasons. “Like other acidic ingredients like yogurt or buttermilk, cottage cheese tenderizes the dough and makes it easier to roll out,” she told me. This tracks: These flatbreads are exceptionally soft (especially if you cook them in a skillet on the stove) and terrifically tender. (And thanks to bread flour, they also have a little bit of chew.)

Photography by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Yekaterina Boytsova

Of course, cottage cheese brings other things to the table, namely all that protein. There’s 14 grams of protein in each of these flatbreads, which is two more than my favorite protein bar. 

But that’s not all. The cottage cheese also adds fat, moisture, and its signature tang. (And salt. “Cottage cheese is so salty,” Sarah says.) To complement the flavor of the cheese, Sarah stirs a tablespoon of crimson chili crisp into the dough along with a generous handful of fresh herbs. Those two additions create a sort of yin and yang — one is spicy, the other is cooling. (Cilantro is Sarah’s first choice of herb, but I can confirm that the cottage cheese and chili crisp also play nicely with dill.) 

To counter the heat further, Sarah recommends pairing these with a dip such as tzatziki. You could also go the other way and schmear them with some Calabrian chili paste. But let’s be real, you know what you and I and everybody else is going to do with these flatbreads. We’re going to double down on the protein and eat them with eggs.

Want more protein? Try these Super Protein Pancakes.

Cover photo by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Yekaterina Boytsova.