Ka’ak/Lebanese Flatbread/Beirut Street Food Bread

Lebanon which is offically known as Lebanese Republic is a country situated in Western Asia. With Syria, Isreal,Cyprus as its borders, this country is very rich in history and ethnic diversity. Lebanese cuisine is a Levantine style of cooking which includes grains, fruits, vegetables seafoods and meats. Lebanese well known dishes are Baba Ghanouj, Hummus, Baklava etc.Here in Paris, we have decent numbers of Lebanese restaurants and even my kids have so many Lebanese friends, obviously this cuisine is not that much unknown for me. However am yet to prepare some authentic Lebanese dishes at home. My today’s post goes for Kaak, its a Beirut street food bread, which is also quite known in Palestine, Syria and Jordan. Lebanese Street vendors leaves this bread to swing from rods in the rolling street carts. This breads looks like hand bag or a large ring shape which is coated with sesame seeds.  Obviously Ka’ak, is a Middle Eastern flatbread, popular in Lebanon, often eaten as breakfast or for a snack.   From those street vendors, you can get ka’ak filled with zaatar or smeared with cheese or hummus.

Lebanese cuisine boasts some enormous variety of flatbreads, you can find baked, filled, soft, stove top, seeded or crisp styles of flatbreads in this cuisine. Ka’ak calls for flat dough which is baked in a hot oven until they gets puffed and crispy with soft interior. Ka’ak can be prepared with with some delicious stuffing in it.and there’s plenty of space to add stuffing. The most common stuffing is Zaatar or Lebanese picon cheese spread.Make them as large as  you want and its quite a prefect bread to have anytime of the day. This bread is a most loved ones by the locals. Serve them warm or at room temperature, this bread is very easy to make, fun to eat and just prefect to enjoy with some Lebanese accompaniment with friends and loved ones for a get together. The original recipe called for egg wash for the topping, but i skipped it completely, apart from it i didnt changed anything in this bread..Am running a month of blogging marathon with A-Z International flatbreads, and my today’s post goes for the alphabetic letter ‘K’, hence am posting Ka’ak from Lebanese cuisine.

Recipe Source: Here
3cups All purpose flour
1cup Whole wheat flour
1tbsp Instant yeast
2tbsp Olive oil
1cup Luke warm Milk
Sesame Seeds
1tbsp Sugar
1+1/2tsp Salt

Take the flours together in a bowl with salt, sugar, instant yeast,olive oil, slowly add the luke warm milk and knead. Add some luke warm water to knead everything well.

Knead everything well until the dough turns soft and elastic.

Transfer the dough to a greased bowl, wrap it and let it for 2hours until they double their volume.

Punch the dough and drop on your work surface, knead for a while.

Put it back again into a greased bowl for second rise and let it sit again for an hour.

Lightly flour your work surface, remove the dough, punch the dough and divide the dough as 4 equal balls.

Roll the dough as tear shaped circle, using a cookie cutter or a saucer plate cut out a circle on top to form a handle.

Place the shaped breads on lined baking tray, loosely cover with kitchen towels and let it sit for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350F, brush the top of the breads with water, sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake for 20-25minutes until the crust turns golden brown.

Allow the breads to cool down on cooling rack.

Enjoy with your favourite spreads.