Sourdough Lebanese Morning Bread (Khobz al-Sabah)

This Lebanese Morning Bread is a tasty pita-style sourdough bread made with three kinds of flour: all-purpose, whole wheat, and corn meal. 

The combination of whole wheat, corn meal, and all purpose flour, along with the sourdough starter, adds so much texture and flavor to this bread. 

Spelt Pita Bread

This spelt pita bread, made with a mixture of whole grain spelt and all purpose spelt, is so much fun to bake. 

Baking pita bread requires a super hot oven equipped with a baking stone, and a very short baking time. If you are like me, and love staring through the window of your oven as your bread bakes, you will enjoy making this bread.

Pita Bread | Tuesdays with Dorie

Bread is an amazing thing. Combine four simple ingredients, flour, water, salt, and yeast, and you can come up with so many different loaves, rolls, flatbreads, pastries, and other wonderful and delicious breads.

For example, pita bread. How do little rolled out disks of dough suddenly puff up while baking, creating a big pocket of air, ready to be filled with tasty salads, spreads, or vegetables?

It's pretty magical!

Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas | Tuesdays with Dorie

These Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas are made from pita dough and a mixture of tomatoes, shallots, garlic, lamb, cinnamon, allspice, salt, and pepper. It's pretty difficult to make this pizza look pretty... the pita is kind of pale. I guess I should have done a mint or parsley garnish, but the reality of this pita is that it doesn't brown much because the baking time is so short. Enough excuses. This pizza is delicious.  Who cares what it looks like.

This pizza is baked on a pita dough. The dough only puffs up on the border because the middle is weighed down by the topping. To see how to make pita, check out this post.

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie group is making Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas.

I was surprised by how much I loved these pizzas. I salted the tomatoes and left them in a strainer for about and hour to concentrate their flavors as I did in this recipe. It's an amazing way to extract serious tomato flavor.

I took some leftovers to work today and reheated them in a toaster oven. Everyone wanted to know what smelled so good. This is such an amazingly healthy and flavorful dish.

Eastern Mediterranean Pizza Recipe

Adapted from Baking with Julia: Savor the Joys of Baking with America's Best Bakers.

Topping

1 tsp olive oil

1/4 C chopped shallots

2 to 3 cloves minced garlic

1/4 pound ground lamb

8 ripe plum tomatoes, chopped, salted, and drained in a mesh sieve over a bowl. 

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Heat the oil over medium heat. 
2. Add the shallots and garlic and cook until fragrant, for about 3 minutes.
3. Add the lamb, breaking it up, and cook until no longer red. 
4. Reduce the heat to medium low and add the tomatoes. Cook for another 3 minutes. If there is still too much liquid, drain it at this point.
5. Add the spices and stir for a few seconds and set aside. 
6. This topping can be made a few days in advance.

Bread

1/2 recipe Pita dough, fully risen

Instructions

1. Divide the dough into eight well formed balls, covering each with plastic wrap.
2. Place a pizza stone on the lowest rack of your oven and preheat it to 500 degrees F.
3. Roll each ball, one at a time, into a 6 to 8 inch round, and top with 1/8th of the topping, throw it on the stone, and bake for about eight minutes. Remove with a spatula and place on a cooling rack. 
4. Continue baking each piece until done. 
5. Serve immediately or store wrapped in foil and reheat as needed. 

Yum!

Check out Tuesdays with Dorie for more versions of this recipe.