Tag: Flatbreads

Pareve

Samoon is the bread of Baghdad — diamond-shaped, with a crispy shell and a soft, airy interior that tears into long, stretchy strands. For Iraqi Jews, samoon was the daily bread, bought fresh each morning from the neighborhood baker (the khabbaz) and eaten with everything from hard-boiled eggs and amba to grilled kebabs and fresh vegetables.

The shape is distinctive and intentional: a pointed diamond or torpedo, scored down the center, that puffs dramatically in a hot oven. The dough is leaner than challah — just flour, water, yeast, salt, and a touch of sugar — which lets the wheat flavor shine. The high-heat baking creates steam pockets inside and a crackling crust outside.

In Israel, samoon has found a new home in the kitchens of the Iraqi Jewish community, where it remains essential for Shabbat breakfasts alongside t’beet (overnight chicken and rice) and hilbeh (fenugreek paste). This recipe brings that tradition to your oven.

This beloved recipe from the Turkish Jewish tradition brings authentic flavors to your home kitchen. Following the Kosher Bread Pro template with precise measurements, baker’s percentages, and detailed halachic guidance, this recipe ensures a perfect result every time.

Whether you’re an experienced baker or trying this for the first time, the step-by-step instructions and troubleshooting tips will guide you to success. Every ingredient is carefully chosen and every technique explained for reliable, delicious results.

Focaccia and Jewish baking may seem like an unexpected pairing, but the connection runs deep. The Sephardic Jewish communities of Italy—who thrived in Livorno, Venice, Rome, and throughout the Italian peninsula for over five hundred years—made olive oil breads an integral part of their culinary tradition. Italian Jewish cooking, one of the oldest continuous Jewish food traditions in Europe, embraced the local ingredients of the Mediterranean: olive oil, rosemary, sea salt, and the kind of slow-fermented wheat breads that define Italian baking at its best.

This focaccia is an expression of that Sephardic Italian heritage. The dough is extraordinarily simple—flour, water, yeast, salt, and generous amounts of extra virgin olive oil—but the technique of long fermentation and patient dimpling produces a bread with a golden, crispy exterior, a cloud-soft interior, and deep wells that pool with olive oil and catch crystals of flaky salt. It’s the kind of bread that converts people who thought they didn’t like baking into devoted home bakers.

What makes this focaccia special is its versatility. Serve it plain alongside a bowl of hummus for a pareve meal, top it with za’atar for a Middle Eastern twist, or dimple cherry tomatoes and olives into the surface for a show-stopping centerpiece. It’s equally at home on a Shabbat table, at a weeknight dinner, or as the foundation for a spectacular sandwich.

Manoushe (also spelled man’oushe or manakeesh in the plural) is the quintessential Levantine breakfast bread—a soft, pillowy flatbread generously spread with a fragrant mixture of za’atar and olive oil, then baked until the edges puff and the herbs bloom into an intoxicating aroma. For Jewish communities across Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, this bread has been a morning staple for generations, eaten fresh from the oven with labneh, fresh vegetables, and strong coffee.

The beauty of manoushe lies in its simplicity. The dough is uncomplicated—flour, water, yeast, a touch of sugar, and salt—but the magic happens when that soft round gets slathered with the za’atar-olive oil paste and hits the heat of the oven. The za’atar topping, a blend of dried thyme, sumac, sesame seeds, and salt, transforms from a paste into a deeply aromatic, slightly crunchy layer that clings to the bread’s surface while the interior remains soft and chewy.

In the Jewish communities of Aleppo and Beirut, manoushe held a special place at the breakfast table, especially on Shabbat morning. Today, it’s one of the most popular street foods in Israel, where bakeries produce hundreds of these flatbreads daily. Making them at home is remarkably straightforward, and the results—hot, fragrant, and impossibly fresh—surpass anything you can buy.

Laffa is the flatbread that puts pita to shame. Where pita is small and pocketed, laffa is large, soft, and pliable — a wide sheet of bread that wraps around shawarma, falafel, and grilled meats like a warm blanket. If you have eaten a shawarma wrapped in a large, thin, slightly chewy flatbread at an Israeli grill restaurant, you have eaten laffa.

Laffa (also spelled lafa) originated in the Iraqi Jewish community, where it was baked in a taboon — a clay oven where the dough is slapped directly onto the scorching-hot walls. Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel brought this bread with them, and it quickly became one of the most popular street breads in the country. Today, laffa is inseparable from Israeli shawarma culture.

At home, you can achieve excellent laffa on a very hot skillet, cast iron pan, or even an inverted wok. The key is high heat and quick cooking — 1–2 minutes per side until the bread puffs, chars slightly, and remains wonderfully soft and pliable.

For a smaller, pocketed alternative, try our Pita Bread. For another Iraqi-influenced bread, see our Sambusak.

Lahmajoun is the paper-thin, crispy flatbread that proves the best pizza is the one you roll up and eat with your hands. Picture a round of dough stretched impossibly thin — almost translucent — spread with a vivid, spiced layer of ground lamb and tomato, then blasted in a scorching oven until the edges crackle and the meat sizzles. You pull it from the heat, squeeze a wedge of lemon across the surface, scatter fresh parsley and a few leaves of mint, roll the whole thing into a tight cylinder, and bite. The crunch gives way to spiced, tangy warmth. This is lahmajoun.

Known affectionately as “Jewish pizza” or “Armenian pizza,” lahmajoun (lahm bi ajeen, لحم بعجين — literally “meat with dough”) has been a cornerstone of Sephardi and Mizrachi cooking for centuries. From the bustling markets of Aleppo to the Jewish quarters of Istanbul, from the kitchens of Baghdad to modern-day Jerusalem, this flatbread has traveled with Jewish communities across the Ottoman world and beyond, adapting to local spices and traditions while keeping its essential character intact.

What sets lahmajoun apart from other flatbreads is its remarkable restraint. The dough is a vehicle — thin, crisp, and yielding — while the topping does the talking. A vibrant paste of finely ground meat, tomato, onion, and peppers, seasoned with cumin, paprika, and the gentle warmth of Aleppo pepper, spread so thinly that the dough beneath crisps in the oven’s fierce heat. There is no cheese, no heavy sauce, no excess. Just meat, dough, fire, and lemon.

Lahmajoun is always rolled, never sliced. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over the surface, add a handful of flat-leaf parsley and fresh mint, then roll it into a cylinder and eat it out of hand. Some add pickled turnips, sliced radishes, or a drizzle of tahini. This is street food at its most elegant.