Egyptian Bread

Our gourmet club dinner is coming up this Friday and we're doing Egyptian cuisine (contemporary). I've been scouring the Internet for recipes for bread from that region, and so far have tried two, without being completely satisfied. It's kind of hard to know what to shoot for if you've never eaten it (I know what baguette is supposed to look/taste like, but not so for 'Eeish baladi').

The first recipe I tried was for a typical flat bread. It actually tasted pretty good, but it was rather dry - more like a cracker than a pita. I may have rolled it out too thin. Also, I think I should have used (some) whole wheat flour.

Yesterday I tried this Middle Eastern Barley Flat Bread. The dough was really, really dry (2 cups of flour with 3/4 cup of liquid!) and hardly rose at all (plus what's up with using both yeast and baking soda as leavening?). The bread was edible but quite dense. I wonder if something got lost in the translation when they put up the recipe.

I think I might use this recipe for the flat bread.

Jennifer also found a cookbook with a recipe for semit, a kind of Egyptian pretzel, that sound really good. I'll definitely make those.