Lahmacun (Turkish Topped Flatbreads)

A version anyone with a domestic oven can make

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In the haze of the hunger that only jetlag can give you, we searched Instanbul’s back streets for Lahmacun.

We were supposed to dine at a place recommended by a normally trustworthy online source, but alas the information was out of date. The restaurant had changed hands and was now a supermarket.

By this point, we’d walked well over an hour from our Airbnb and were extremely hangry. We agreed to settle on the first place we found that advertised Lahmacun on its window.

This being Istanbul, that place was just 20 metres down the street from the restaurant-turned-supermarket.

Lahmacun is often described as “Turkish pizza.” I suppose it is a topped flatbread, but that’s where the similarities end. Whilst pizza (of my favoured Neapolitan kind at least) is puffy and fluffy and (often) covered in cheese and/or tomato, Lahmacun is thinly rolled and delivers flavours of spiced meat, herbs, garlic and smoke from the wood-fired ovens where it is invariably cooked. You pile it high with sliced tomatoes, sumac-covered onions and salad, wrap it up and eat.

You can’t do that with pizza.

We sat at the working-man-style eatery we’d stumbled upon. Naturally, no one spoke English so we do what we always do. We pointed at the picture on the menu, signalled we wanted two and hoped for the best.

In the corner of the restaurant was the most beautiful tiled wood-fired oven and a dude who, yes like those Italian pizzaiolos, played with dough. He rolled it until it was impossibly thin, quickly pressed in a thin layer of spiced lamb, and whacked it in the oven.

Less than a minute later, the Lahmacun was on our table and a new food obsession was born.

We spent the rest of the trip eating at least two Lahmacun a day and whilst they were all fantastic, my favourite remained that first one. It was first information bias I suppose.

That or we really did find the best one first.

Since that trip, I dismissively assumed you couldn’t make Lahmacun without a wood-fired oven. So 18 months later during a quick trip back to the UK, I fired up my Gozney pizza oven which is on long-term loan at my brother’s house. The results were great.

But still, that’s not much use during my daily life in a small Portuguese apartment.

Then I had a facepalm moment watching chef Meliz Berg make them in a hot domestic oven.

Duh. Of course you could make them in a hot domestic oven.

OK, it might not have the smokiness you get from wood-fired ovens, but you can make a pretty decent version without the use of a $400 pizza oven or fancy outside kitchen setup.

So I did. And it freaking worked.

So here you have it. Lahmacun fit for a small kitchen in a small apartment.

I made my own dough because I’m obsessed with bread. But I have it on good authority you can use good quality store-bought pizza bases if you’re in a hurry. The trick is to roll them as thin as you can, whether you make your own or buy.

Make sure to only use a thin scraping of the spiced lamb mixture. You want to keep the base as dry as possible to ensure a crispy bottom.

Whack your oven as high as it’ll go. For me that was around 260C/500F.

Keep an upturned baking tray or pizza stone in the oven to get it super hot.

If you don’t have a pizza peel, roll the dough then place it on parchment paper before you top it so you can easily transfer the whole thing onto the hot tray.

Makes 6-8 depending on the size you want