2mediumtomato, sliced and sprinkled with a little salt
pul biber (Aleppo pepper)
pickled chilis or other pickles
How I make it
Mix 160 g of the flour with the sugar, yeast and water until it forms a wet dough. Cover and leave until doubled in size, 1-2 hours.
Add the rest of the flour, the salt and the olive oil. Using a kitchen machine, knead on medium/high speed until smooth and elastic. This usually takes 5-10 minutes, but can vary significantly. Make sure your dough doesn't get hotter than your body temperature – if it does, cover and place in the fridge for 10-15 minutes before continuing. When you can stretch the dough between your fingers until near-transparent before it breaks, it's ready. Cover and leave to double in size, around an hour.
Place a pizza stone or baking stone high up in your oven and turn the heat as high as it goes (mine is 300 °C). Pizza stones and baking stones need anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes to warm up, depending on the material. If you don't have one, simply preheat the oven to its highest temperature.
When the dough has doubled in size, tip onto a floured surface. Divide into 6-8 equally sized pieces. Shape each piece into a ball by stretching the edges towards the middle repeatedly until you have a firm and smooth surface. Leave the balls to rise a final time, covered and seam-side down, until they have relaxed a little, 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the topping. Discard the wet core of the tomatoes. Very finely chop the tomatoes, onion, garlic and flat-leaf parsley until completely mixed. I use a kitchen machine for this. If the mixture looks very wet, drain some of the liquid. Add the mixture to a bowl along the minced meat, red pepper paste, tomato paste, salt and pepper.
Roll out each piece of dough to a very thin disc. Place it on a floured pizza peel. You can also place it on a baking parchment, if you find that easier. Using your fingers, add a thin layer of the topping mixture to cover the entire flatbread fairly evenly. Don't worry if there are spots with very little topping. This is normal for lahmacun!
Bake one or two lahmacun at the time until crispy and golden at the edges, 3-8 minutes, depending on your oven heat and whether you are using a pizza stone or baking stone. If you don't have one, bake on a regular baking sheet towards the bottom of the oven for 2-4 minutes. Then move it to the top of the oven to finish off, usually another 2-4 minutes.
Serve immediately with your condiments of choice.
Tips & notes
On US measurements for baking: I strongly advise always using weight measurements in baking. Volume measures are simply too inaccurate, often leading to disappointing results. Most kitchen scales, even cheap ones, usually have the option to display grams as well as ounces. I therefore don’t provide separate US measures for baking recipes.
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