Turkish Flatbread That’s Better Than Pizza

Lahmacun is a street food dating back to the Ottoman empire. It's thin, crispy, and really really delicious. I'm using my pizza dough recipe to attempt a version of this in a home oven.

Prep Time	Cook Time	Serves
1 hour plus overnight rise	30 minutes	6 lahmacun

Dough

500g AP flour

350ml warm water

0.5g active dry yeast

10g sea salt

Lahmacun Recipe

1lb ground lamb

1 bell pepper

1 red onion

28oz can whole tomatoes (leave out the liquid)

4 cloves garlic

1 tbsp tomato paste

Aleppo pepper

Cinnamon

Salt

Pepper

Sumac Onions

1 red onion

Lemon juice

Sumac

Salt

Pepper

Chopped parsley

Step 1: Make Dough

Add the flour and water to a large bowl or container. Mix the water into the flour using your hands until a shaggy dough is formed. Cover and rest for 30 minutes. Add the yeast to a small bowl with a little splash of water until a paste is formed and let it rest while the dough does.

After the rest, add the yeast paste and salt. Wet your hands with water and mix the salt and yeast into the dough. When you don't feel any salt crystals, lift the center of the dough and drop it back down to help form a ball. Do this multiple times until the dough is semi smooth. Cover and rest for another 30 minutes.

After this rest, lift the dough up off the bottom and fold it over on itself. The idea is to fold half of the dough on the other half by slapping and folding the dough down on the board (or bowl). Cover and rest for 30 minutes.

Do another round of slap and folds until the dough is really smooth. Add a little olive oil to the container so it doesn't stick then cover and rest for about 8 hours. Look for the dough to double in size.

After the dough has doubled in size, cut it into 6 even balls (about 130g each). Roll each dough section into smooth balls. Cover them and let them ferment in the fridge for at least a day, up to three is good.

When you're ready to make the lahmacun, pull the dough out of the fridge 45 minutes before so it can come up to room temp.

Step 2: Make The Lamb Topping

Set your oven to 500f with a pizza stone or steel in the middle rack. Roughly chop the bell pepper and onion then add it to a food processor with the garlic. Blitz that until broken down, then let the vegetable mix sit in a strainer over a bowl to remove excess liquid. Quite a bit will come out. Mix the blended vegetables with the lamb and season with tomato paste, aleppo, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Set that aside once it's mixed.

Step 3: Sumac Onions

Thinly slice the red onions then mix with lemon juice, salt, pepper, sumac, and chopped parsley. Go easy on the sumac or they will be really sour. Let these marinate while you bake the lahmacun.

Step 4: Bake The Lahmacun

On a floured surface roll out a dough ball until it's very thin. Thinner than a standard pizza dough. Poke the surface of the dough with a fork. Spread on a thin layer of the lamb mix, usually around 1/4 to 1/3 cup of mix per lahmacun. Add olive oil to the top of the lamb mix to aid in browning. Using a floured pizza peel or cutting board, slide the lahmacun onto the hot pizza stone. Bake this until the bottom is super crispy and the top is fully cooked. Usually 4-6 minutes in total. Add a little more olive oil when they come out of the oven, then top with the sumac onions. Roll the dough around the onions and eat like a wrap. Enjoy!