I used to spend a lot of time at my grandmothers house as a toddler, and every once an a while she would give me something called
“Syrian bread,” which was made by a neighbor across the street. It was
one of my earliest food memories, and at the time, probably my favorite thing to
eat. It was just so much different than the sliced white bread, or crusty
Italian bread I was used to eating.
After a few (dozen) experiments, I finally nailed it down,
and was suddenly transported back to grandma’s kitchen. By the way, this might
be as close to a time machine as we ever get. Fair warning, it may take a little practice stretching
the dough over the bowl (or Lebanese mountain bread pillow), but your efforts
will be richly rewarded, so I really do hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!
Ingredients for about 8 portions Lebanese Mountain Bread:
1/2 cup bread flour
1 teaspoon dry active yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup warm water
then add:
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/2 teaspoon fine salt)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup bread flour, plus more as needed
44 comments:
Would pasta machine work?
Cool chef, love your video! Always wanted to to take a stab working with dough. The streching it. Your dishes alway good easier to make. Very inspiring! Thxs chef!
This looks awesome. Great job of demonstrating how it is done. I'm gonna do it. Thanks
By 8 portions do you mean 8 pieces of bread? There would be nothing wrong with halving the recipe, right? Sorry, I'm new to making bread. How long does this bread keep? I'm assuming not very long.
Hey! I come from a village in the Lebanese mountains and completely approve of this recipe. What we usually do is make these for breakfast and top them with a paste made of Za'atar (a thyme-sesame-sumac powder) and olive oil and heat up the bread on a skillet til the paste adheres to the bread. You should make a Za'atar video, Chef John! It's an amazing spice-herb mix that pretty much goes with everything including the Labneh you made here earlier!
Strange how things work out! I came here to get the pita bread recipe and found this on the front page! So guess what? Yup, I'll be prepping this tonight and trying it tomorrow with the chicken souvlaki I was going to have tonight! I have no bread flour so I will use all purpose and will be back to let you know how it turned out.
One thing I was wondering is how long these will keep for once cooked? Should I put them in a zip lock and leave them out or keep them in the fridge? Oh well, I'll figure it out over the next few days I guess.
Thanks for this one!
Drool!i can't wait to try this!
These look awesome! Sometimes when I make pitas a little thin they come out like this by accident. Next time I will go for broke and get them as thin as possible.
I like the day in the fridge definitly helps the flavor.
I'm dreaming of this with my sourdough starter... finally got it down to a science to minimize effort at home to be able to keep it going forever.
Step 1 make a starter until it works well. (whole wheat for the starter, true wild starter no store yeast)
Step 2 make white flour flat bread with most of it.
Step 3 add a bunch of wheat flour to the remaining starter, so it's play-doh or even thicker, and only about a cup total.
step 3 throw in the fridge and forget about it for 1-2 weeks, or until next time.
step 4 take it out, add more flour and water to make thick pancake batter texture, maybe a half cup of each, leave on counter
step 5 wait 4-24 hours or whenever you are planning to make bread
step 6 return to step 2.......
Chef John, looking forward to making this; it looks absolutely fantastic. My only wish (like in Food Wishes) is that I could find a "print" button in order to properly print out the recipe, here, at home. Just my suggestion; thanks for all the great recipes and instruction.
This looks great, definitely going to give it a try!
The recipe is quite similar to how I do pizza dough, but here you don't add all the flour at the start, giving you a 'wet' rise, and then adding the rest later. What does this do for the dough? Does it end up making it more stretchy/elastic?
Cheers!
chef john can you make butter chicken, because this bread is butterin me up so much, i'm about to checkin the kitchen if we have the ingredients to make it
Hi Chef John!
This looks delicious and healthy! I was wondering how long does the dough store for in the fridge?
Thank you, looks great. Can i prepare dough and freeze it and use as needed?
Yes, thank you Chef John. This is on the list of things I need to make!
Hi Chef John!
That mountain bread really does look delicious. I'm having some trouble making this at home though, because I'm swiss and we don't use volumes for measurement, we use weight. Actually I think the whole of Europe does. Anyway. Converting all the ingredients with their relative volumes into grams is a drag, since i have to change the calculator for every single ingredient. I know it doesn't sound like a big effort to calculate it, but sometimes, that's what stands between cooking a recipe and searching for another one for me.
So, would you maybe consider putting weights for solids and volumes for liquids into your blog as well? Metric would be perfect (and probably make more sense, because you americans are going to use volumes anyway), but it's fine if they are imperial, converting them into metric is way easier.
But that's just a suggestion, I'll happily continue converting cups and teaspoons and whatnot if I get to watch new vids from you!:)
I dont know how we found your videos, but every single one is amazing. I made mystery meat...excellent...shepherds cottage pie...excellent..and quite a few others I don't remember now. Today I am making your creamy pork stew. The taste is complex, and such an easy recipe! It could be served at a fancy celebration! Love your presentation, jokes too, ease of recipe, and gorgeous end results.
PS. Today I intended to make the pork chicken drumsticks...city chicken....but it is rainy and cold here in NY, so went with the stew instead! Bon Appetit!
Happy Birthday!!! My bread is resting in the fridge for BLTS tommorow night!
Can I use a food processor for this, as I'm lazy, or does it effect the outcome?
Chef John, i always love your recipes. Made a ton and they always come out great. Soon you should make the cured middle eastern sausage Sujuk(sp?). Ive had it a number of places made in house but cant find a great source to purchase at home.
Argh! I don't understand why, but every time I follow along with one of your bread videos I always need more water. My sponge didn't even need a whisk. I'm destined to fail at breads forever.
Very tasty bread but I could not get the bread stretched out as thin as it was supposed to be. Mine turned out more like pita.
Any ideas on how to stretch the dough one handed? Stretching the dough one handed over the bowl did not work very well.
Thanks
This is probably why weights would be better, but did you use a heaped cup measurement? One other good thing to note about recipes with weight is the salt. Not all kosher salts are the same, and in fact can be very different weights by volume.
Mmm, bread.
I had to substitute bread flour with rye flour (couldn't find bread flour in the grocery store). They turned out "okay" for my taste. For some reason, though, my final product is a lot less puffy, maybe there's something wrong with my yeast.
I have tried this twice and it is not coming out right. The dough is super rubbery and definitely not stretchable. I consider myself to be an advances bread maker, even with yeast breads. Are the ingredient amounts correct? Should I add more water because that looks like more than a half cup to me. Anyone else having this problem? Thank you!
Tomasz Pasta machine will not work. the dough is very delicate, machine will tear it apart. But the trick with the bowl is really easy! If you have one of those steel Ikea bowls it works like magic.
@Bennett Fam
I found the ingredients worked well for me as stated. The only difference was that I used 2.5 tsp of Fresh Yeast as I had some in the fridge. They came out really well. I used half on the day following dough prep as suggested and then the other half one day after that. The second batch were significantly better, so perhaps a two day wait is optimal (although it could be that my stretching technique has improved).
Fantastic recipe.
I found the longer you leave it in the fridge the better it becomes. I have gone as long as three days and it was amazing. I also found it works better for me if I don't use the entire cup of flour added after the sponge is ready - usually about a table spoon or little more. Awesome recipe
Just did this but only 1/2 size. It's delicious! I'm a complete newb to bread making but I think I should not have halved the yeast... Plus kind of cool in my kitchen these days. Still, it's fun, easy and is delicious. I should have made the full recipe cuz it's gonna be gone... well, it is :-/
Admittedly, I did not read all of the other comments, so this may well be a repeat of information. If so, I apologize. The difference between bread flour and A/P flour is pronounced, and can make a huge difference, depending upon the recipe. Bread flour has a much higher protein content, so it develops more gluten, with kneading. Since baking, unlike cooking, is a science, every ingredient can be critical.
I followed the directions faithfully with one exception - I could only find Red Star Instant Yeast at the store and that seemed to bubble up immediately and become very thick without any waiting at all. So I continued to follow the directions but did not see the doubling of size in step 2. My bread turned out OK though (not as good as yours I'm sure).
Chef John, I love your recipes and hope you live forever, which is why, with some regret, I feel I must share this article with you:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed-meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages
Hi it's me again, "unknown," - I tried making this again, used the same yeast, but this time whisked more thoroughly in the first step and used bread flour instead of all purpose. Everything came out perfectly this time, thanks!
Chef John,
I greatly enjoy all of your recipes and videos.
I have two questions about the Lebanese Mountain Bread
1. About what diameter is the bread before you place it in the pan?
2. To what temperature should the pan be heated?
Thanks, this looks wonderful. Hope to try it soon.
Chef John, I also find you recipes and videos to be wonderful.
I have two questions about the Lebanese Mountain Bread:
1. What is the diameter of the bread after it has stretched across the bowl?
2. To what temperature is the pan heated?
I can't wait to try this recipe
If you follow the recipe as shown in the video using the exact ingredients called for you will get the exact result as Chef John. I made some today for the first time and had great success. Stretching the dough was made easy by doing a gentle freehand pre-stretch until just large enough to place the dough over the bowl then holding the dough with one hand at the top of the bowl and stretching with the other hand until it’s sufficiently stretched to use both hands on opposite sides of each other to further stretch the dough.
Pan heat for me was just a hair below 7 on the burner dial which is around the middle of the mid-high range, which is between 6-8 typically. My stove is a plain ole regular coil burner type. If you start the pan preheating just before you start rolling & stretching your first dough piece it should be heated enough when you’re ready to pop one in the pan. I had one in the pan while rolling out another one, keeping a sharp eye on the pan to make sure I made the flip to the other side in time. This dough is very forgiving so the one I was stretching waited patiently so I could flip away. LOL
Timing is everything.
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Hope this post helps someone.
I seem to fail every time, my bread never stretches without tearing. I left it in the fridge for 24hrs. What am I doing wrong?
I made this with regular flour and regular yeast and peanut oil. Didn't measure anything and made a few before I put it in the fridge. These came out a lot like my grandma's tortillas, although she used something like Crisco and baking soda or baking powder (not sure). I'm going to try following the recipe exactly next time. They were good but room to improve.
this worked out quite well. I did all the stretching on the work top but no problem getting a good stretch.
I made this recipe today. Worked out pretty well. Thank you!
For all the people whose dough turned out too strechy.
Let it rest after initial rollin. 10 minutes rest will relax gluten and make it more pliebale. Working with gluten is tricky, by kneading too long you can make it so elastic that it get rubbery. That it has to rest and then miracle happens.
Flour tortillas lol are the same way making but without yeast lard n baking soda and salt
I'm not particularly good or interested in all the different ways to send the same thing. If I find one of your recipes I want to try, all I want to do is print it out with directions, not just ingredients. This used to be the way things worked. It is now way too complicated to just get a recipe with written directions. Am I missing something? Probably am. If there is something I should know, I would appreciate knowing assuming it does not involve finding robots and signing up for junk I don't care about. If that's the only way, I won't be seeing you as much, Chef John and that is not a good thing for me. Please advise.
Bob, one of your faithful fans for many years.
This reminds me of my grandma’s bread. She made bread on Mondays. As a first grader I would “forget my lunch” , so I could walk to my grandma’s house in Mondays for lunch and I would feast on freshly made mountain bread. She would spin the dough paper thin and place it on a hot griddle. Looking forward to making this now 65 years later.
For people who are using all purpose flour or another flour for this recipe, what you are missing out on is the extra gluten in bread flour, which gives the dough structure. If you have some vital wheat gluten, just add a little bit of that to the flour and then your all purpose flour will act more like bread flour. How much? About 1 TBL vital wheat gluten can be added to 2-3 cups of all purpose flour. (If you are using cake flour or pastry flour maybe 1 TBL to every 2 cups, as those flours are the lowest in protein/gluten.)
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