Manakeesh on a steel plate
The manoushe you remember from the furn has a base that is crisp underneath and still soft in the middle, with an edge that has blistered and caught colour. A home oven on a baking tray gives you none of that, because a tray has almost no heat in it. On a preheated steel plate you get most of the way there, and it takes four minutes.
The dough
This makes six to eight manakeesh depending on how thin you roll them. It is deliberately a soft, oil-enriched dough rather than a lean pizza dough, which is what gives manakeesh their tenderness.
- 500g plain or bread flour
- 300g warm water
- 30g olive oil
- 10g sugar
- 8g salt
- 5g instant yeast
Mixing and resting
Mix everything except the salt and let it sit for ten minutes, then add the salt and knead for five to eight minutes until the dough is smooth and slightly tacky. Cover and leave it until doubled, about an hour in a warm kitchen.
Divide into six to eight pieces, shape each into a ball, cover them and rest for twenty minutes. Skipping this rest is the reason dough fights back when you try to roll it.
Preheat properly
Put the plate on the upper third rack, set the oven to maximum, and give it a full 45 minutes after it reaches temperature. This is not optional and it is not a place to save time. The plate is the oven as far as your manoushe is concerned, and a half-heated plate makes a pale, soft manoushe no matter how good the dough is.
Turn the grill on for the last five minutes if your oven has one, so the top surface is hot as well.
Topping and baking
For zaatar, mix roughly equal volumes of zaatar and olive oil into a loose paste. It should spread, not crumble. For cheese, akkawi soaked to remove some salt, or a mix of akkawi and mozzarella, is the usual choice.
Roll a ball out to about 5mm on a lightly floured surface, transfer it to a floured peel or the back of a tray, dimple the surface with your fingertips, then spread the topping to within a centimetre of the edge.
Slide it onto the plate. Four minutes for zaatar, five for cheese, until the edge has blistered and taken colour. Manakeesh go from done to dry quickly, so watch the first one and adjust.
The two things that go wrong
Rolling too thin is the first. A manoushe rolled to 2mm becomes a cracker on a steel plate. 5mm gives you a base that crisps underneath and stays soft above.
Not enough oil in the zaatar is the second. A dry zaatar mix scorches in four minutes at maximum heat. The oil is what carries the heat evenly and keeps the topping from burning.
Roll it to 5mm, keep the zaatar loose with oil, and give the plate the full 45 minutes before the first one goes in.