Lahmacun

Ingredients

• Plain flour400 g
• Warm water240 ml
• Dried yeast5 g
• Minced lamb400 g
• Onion1
• Red pepper1
• Tomato1
• Biber salçası pepper paste2 tbsp
• Parsley20 g
• Pul biber flakes1 tsp
• Lemon and herbs to serveto taste
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a dough from the flour, water, yeast and salt for eight minutes and prove it an hour.

   70 min

2. 2

   Blend the onion, pepper and tomato and press the purée through a sieve: the spare water is not wanted.

   8 min

3. 3

   Mix the lamb with the vegetable purée, the pepper paste, chopped parsley, flakes and salt. It should be as thick as a pâté.

   8 min

4. 4

   Heat the oven with a stone at full power for forty minutes.

   40 min

5. 5

   Roll the balls of dough paper-thin, twenty-five centimetres across, and spread the topping thinly right to the edges.

   15 min

6. 6

   Bake on the stone three or four minutes. The edges should colour and the middle stay soft: a lahmacun is rolled up to eat.

   20 min

About the dish

Lahmacun is not a pizza: there is barely any dough, rolled until it is translucent, and the topping is a two-millimetre layer. A thick topping will not cook in the three minutes the thing spends in the oven.

The lamb is blended with onion, pepper and tomato into a paste. Pieces of vegetable release water and soak the dough from below.

The oven is heated at full power with a stone for at least forty minutes. At 250 °C a lahmacun is done in three minutes; at 200 °C it dries out without browning.

Worth knowing

• — Spread the topping right to the edge, with no rim. A bare edge burns before the middle is done.
• — Stack the baked lahmacun and cover them with a cloth: they steam and go soft, which is how they should be.
• — They are eaten rolled up with parsley, onion and lemon juice inside. Knife and fork are not the way.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

420 kcal

Protein

22 g

Fat

16 g

Carbs

48 g

Useful for this recipe

• Oven Temperature Converter

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