Lahmacun is a Turkish dish and translated ‘bread-meat’. Its simple and delicious and a nice (and very fast to prepare) ‘pizza alternative’. Its very crispy but at the same time very soft and tender.

Ingredients

Dough:

• 275g flour
• 50 sourdough
• 155g water
• 5g sugar
• 7g salt

Topping:

• 300g onion
• 200g minced beef
• 2 cloves garlic
• 15g tomato paste
• 50g yoghurt
• 30g Nduja
• parsley
• 8g salt
• 8 corns black pepper
• 1/2 tsp sumach
• 0-70g water

Instructions

Dough

Originally the dough is made with dry yeast, though I really dislike that taste. Instead I used 50g sourdough starter. In my case I did use very sour one directly from the fridge. For bread this would not really work, though for this dish the sourdough is not there for the rise but only for the taste.

In case you don’t have a sourdough starter you can just add 25g flour and water instead. It will still work. If you want some yeasty flavor use 10g fresh yeast and not dried one.

Knead all ingredients together until you get a smooth dough. Let the dough sit for about 20 minutes. Split it into 8 equal parts and form little dough balls. Cover them with a damp kitchen towel while you prepare the topping.

Topping

This topping should be pretty wet. To get some more liquid I blend one of the onions while cutting the other one to contain some consistency. Finely chop the parsley and the garlic and add all ingredients other than the water. You want to be able to spread this mass easily on the dough, so add water until you are able to do that.

You can substitute the tomato paste with fresh tomatoes, just reduce the water in that case.

I found a good test is to split the mass with a spoon, you don’t want to see liquid directly forming in the trench, though after letting the mass rest for a few minutes you should be able to see some liquids.

Forming

Take one dough ball out and roll it out on a lightly floured surface. You want to get the dough as thin as possible. Place it on a pizza shovel or a thin cutting board (with a flat surface). Spread the topping all over the dough, leaving only a 1cm edge uncovered. Place it in a preheated oven at maximum heat. If you have one do use your pizza stone. It will make a huge difference. Let it bake until the edge gets lightly brown.

If you have issues placing the dough in the oven you can also place and top the dough on a sheet of baking paper. Place the lahmacun with baking paper in the oven. To get better results I would suggest removing the baking paper after a bit so the dough can dry out a bit more and get super crispy, though thats optional. You can bake it on baking paper start to finish.

Once baked I toped it with a bit of sumach and fresh pressed lemon juice. Originally there would be fresh parsley on top too, though I did not have that at hand.

Next time..

• reduce Nduja from 50 to 30g(done, updated recipe)