(Note: Turkish spelling is Lahmacun, Armenian spelling is Lahmajun). In the USA, its often called Armenian pizza.
As featured on my podcast.
Makes about 16. You will probably want x2 each!
Wood Fired Oven
Hot - heat up to about 400-500 F. You want the floor to be super hot - just like for pizza. These will cook very quickly.
Ingredients - Dough
500 g white bread flour
1 tsp white sugar
6 g Instant dried yeast.
320 ml water (room temperature or colder)
10 g salt
1Tbsp olive oil
Ingredients - Meat topping
4 medium tomatoes, halved with watery centres removed.
1 red onion
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 red bell pepper
Small bunch of flat-leaf parsley
200 g ground lamb mince
200 g ground beef mince
1 tsp hot red pepper paste or a sprinkle of chilli flakes
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
Ingredients - Serving
6-8 large lemon wedges
Several bunches flat-leaf parsley
Sliced tomatoes
Instructions
Start with preparing the flat bread dough. Mix 320 grams of the flour with the sugar, yeast and the water to form a slightly wet dough. Cover the bowl and allow to double in size. This may take 2 hours or so.
After it has doubled, add the remaining flour, salt and drizzle in the olive oil. I use my large mixer to do the next step - but if you prefer, get your hands dirty. knead the dough until it becomes smooth and stretchy. This could take up to 12 minutes or so - but this depends a lot on the flour.
Do a stretch test - pull the dough apart with your fingers - you should be able to see through it - it should be almost transparent without breaking. You now need to cover it again and leave for at least an hour to double in size again.
Sprinkle some flour onto your bench, and tip the dough out of the bowl. Using a dough cutter, divide up into about 16 pieces. Stretch each into a ball - like you would if you were making pizza dough. This means you need to stretch each side of the dough ball back into its center - until the top of the ball is tight and smooth. Its quite fun to do actually! Finally, you need to allow these to rise one last time. I use a proofing box for this, but you can just cover these on your bench. Place into a proofing box with the seams of the dough facing down. Allow about 30 minutes for the dough to relax. I just leave these in the box until I am ready to cook. Time now is a bit flexible. You can also roll these out early (see below) and keep on grease-proof paper in your proofing box - so they are all ready to go when its time to cook.
It's now time to make the meat topping for the flat breads. Cut the tomatoes in half, and scoop out the centres and eat or discard. You don't want the mixture to be wet. Chop the tomatoes, bell peppers, flat leaf parsley, onion and garlic finely. Remember to keep the mixture as dry as possible. Drain if required. Place in a kitchen blender along with both the lamb and beef mince, red pepper paste, tomato paste and some salt and pepper and lemon juice. I like to set this aside for an hour or so in the fridge to let the flavours combine.
When you are ready to cook, roll out each dough ball into a very thin circle. When they are cooked - you will be rolling these up - if they are too thick, you will not be able to do this without breaking them. I use a little semolina on my pizza peel and place each flat dough in the middle of the peel. Add a thin layer of your topping mixture onto the dough.
Slide into your wood fired oven. They don't take long to cook if your oven is hot - perhaps 2-3 minutes or less.
When cooked, slide onto a large plate. Add some parsley, sliced tomatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice to the top. Don't cut the finished Lahmacun, simply roll it up into a wrap and eat while hot.
Easy, fun and oh..... so good!
