This bread reminds me of mu old village tradition. Every year, everyone from my village use to gather in the village square for the tradition event. Old ladies from the village use to bring their saj grill and make traditional saj bread for the whole village. They would top the bread with zaatar, cheese or kawarma (beef preserved in fat, once heated the fat melts onto the meat). Ok, I am ready to get started. Let’s cook and have fun together! 🙂
This recipe makes 8 small flatbreads
Ingredients
- 3 cups of Flour
- 1 1/2 tbsp Vegetable Oil
- 3/4 cup Water (Boiled)
- Pinch of Salt
Making the Bread
In a stand mixer we added the flour, salt, oil, and the 3/4 cup of boiling water. Mix for about 5 minutes on low. My dough needed a bit more water to become soft. I added room temperature water until i got to the desired hydration. I Spread some flower on your worktop and kneaded the dough for about 2 min. I then divided the dough to 8 pieces, shaped them into balls and placed them on generously floured surface, and covered them. I then started rolling each piece with a rolling pin as thinly as possible.
I needed to have a reliable method of placing the really thin dough onto the saj grill. I took a pillow placed it on a cotton sheet slightly larger than its surface. I then grabbed all 4 corners of the sheet, pulled them toward the center of the top side of pillow and tied them together. this made the bottom side of pillow round.
I do not have a saj grill, so I needed to make my own. I used the back of the wok as my saj. I placed it over 2 burners on my stove and turned them to medium heat (your stove may differ).
I took each piece of rolled dough and placed it on the round side of the pillow. I then stretched the dough even further to get it as thin and round as possible. I flipped the pillow onto the hot saj grill and made sure the bottom browned, then flipped it to the other side and also made sure it became brown. Baking on the saj grill should only take a few seconds since the bread is very thin.
Remove from the grill and cover with a kitchen towel to prevent them from getting dry.
Enjoy the lovely warm Saj bread! 🙂
We used our bread to make Chicken Shawarma, and Labneh sandwiches.
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