Traditional Turkish Flatbreads

While enjoying the great summer weather, we are trying to share some summer recipes with you of course. What’s better than having a late night barbecue with family and friends on a warm summer night? You don’t need a jacket and can spend the night outside having a good time with great conversations and great food such as traditional Turkish flatbreads.

Just think of that typical barbecue charcoal smell – what is missing? Exactly: a good bread to eat with your meat or vegetables and to soak up all the good sauces and dips that come along with a barbecue.

Traditional Turkish flatbreads are an all time favourite and are also great for eating them as a kebab!

Things to know before you start

Time Schedule

This traditional Turkish flatbreads will be ready in about 16 hours.

Total ingredients

You will have a dough of about 1036,55 g in total for 2 traditional Turkish flatbreads.

Difficulty

Simple recipe for very tasty traditional Turkish flatbreads.

Baking tools

You are good to go with some of our should have baking tools. A bakers couche is recommended, but not necessary.

Steps

1. Autolyse #1

• Mix the 3 ingredients together
• Store sealed for 12 hours at 20-22°C (68-71,6°F)

2. Autolyse #2

• Mix the 3 ingredients together in another bowl
• Store sealed for 12 hours at 20-22°C (68-71,6°F)

3. Mix

• Mix salt, sugar and crumbled yeast with water in a separate bowl to dissolve

• Mix all of the mentioned ingredients together in a stand mixer for 5 minutes on speed level one and 10 minutes on speed level two
• The dough shouldn’t stick too much to the bowl after mixing

4. Bulk Fermentation, Stretch & Fold

• Cover the dough and let it rest for a total of 2,5 hours at 20-22°C (68-71,6°F)
• During that time stretch & fold the dough every 30 minutes (3 times in total) and after the 3rd time let it ferment further for another 60 minutes until 2,5 hours in total are reached
• After each stretch and fold put it back to the bowl and cover it again so it doesn’t dry out

5. Shape, Proof

• Divide the dough in 2 pieces of about 500 g each
• Gently shape each dough by rounding it into a ball
• Let them proof in a floured bakers couche (if you don’t have one, use a clean kitchen towel) seam-side up for 30 minutes – Don’t forget to cover it so it doesn’t dry out
• Afterwards take each dough ball and place it seam-side down on your workbench
• Use your fingertips to press each one down until you nearly reach the ground, spreading the dough out creating the size and thickness you want to have
• Place each dough with the dented side facing the bottom on the bakers couche and let them proof for another 30 minutes
• Cover a pizza peel with parchment paper
• Take each dough and place it with the dented side facing top on the pizza peel
• Use your fingertips to gently press each dough down a bit again
• Coat the doughs with milk and sprinkle some sesame on top
• Tip: If your oven is not big enough to bake both flatbreads at once, place the second dough after dividing it in the fridge for 30 minutes (sealed in a bowl), before you start shaping it

6. Bake

• Preheat oven to 250°C (482°F) for ~45 minutes with the upper and lower heat function
• Put the flatbreads in the oven, create steam and bake for 25 minutes
• After 10 minutes lower the temperature to 220°C (428°F), let the steam out by opening the oven door for ~45 seconds and close it again
• Tip: If you discover that your flatbreads are getting too dark, place some tin foil on top of them

7. Cool

• After baking take out your Turkish flatbreads immediately and coat them with a bit of milk again
• Let them cool for about 30 minutes on some kind of grid

Conclusion

Crust

The crust is crunchy and aromatic. By coating the crust with some milk it’s getting a nice shine.

Crumb

As an opposite to the crust, the crumb is quite soft but still firm. It has big pores that provide great hiding places for delicious sauces!

Taste

Heavenly! It even tastes like summer and the sesame seeds on top add another layer of flavour to it.

Goes good with

As already mentioned in our introduction, this traditional Turkish flatbread goes good with anything that comes with a barbecue. Whether it is meat, vegetables, different sauces or dips. This is a very versatile one.

Also, you can have it as the base for your kebab – perfect match! Consider it as a „bag“ that you can fill with all the things you love. It’s just so good!

Lessons Learned

Initially our traditional Turkish flatbreads have been a bit small for our taste (about 350 g each one) and they got a bit too dark too early.

Therefore we adjusted the weight of the ingredients so each flatbread will weigh about 500 g and we changed the heat to be a bit lower in the second phase of baking.

Credits

This recipe was inspired by Fladenbrot nach türkischer Art.

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