Lahmajun (Armenian pizza)
Eating lahmajun in my grandma’s kitchen in Cyprus is a core memory for me. I remember that she’d make the meat mixture and drop it off at the Armenian bakery in Lefkosia (aka Nicosia in English, the capital city of Cyprus), and around lunchtime my grandpa would return home with a stack of lahmajun, wrapped in foil, and we’d sit around the table, squeeze over some lemon and wrap each one up. I always asked why she’d only make the topping and the answer was always: it’s a lot of work to make it from scratch.
My grandma developed alzeihmer’s before I could learn any of her recipes - which is honestly so heartbreaking, especially as she was well known in our family for being a fabulous cook - so teaching myself how to make lahmajun has truly been a labour of love and test of memory.
I did the rounds with family, asking cousins in the know if we had a family recipe that I could work from, but like many family recipes, they exist in mind and not on paper. When it comes to cooking recipes from my heritage, I’m often guided by memory and personal accounts and verification from family. All of this is to say that this went through a number of different rounds of testing before I got it right. This version tastes like a memory, and so I’m excited to share it with you.
A note on lahmajun and its representation on social media among creators - I have often seen lahmajun being baked in a pizza oven at incredibly high temperatures, yielding a very puffy and airy result. I have also tested this at home, and can confirm that you will have much better results cooking this at a high heat in your regular home oven, which results in a much better texture that’s more accurate to how a lahmajun should be. The cooked dough should be quite thin, slightly crispy on the bottom, and able to be rolled up. It should not be like a Neopolitan-style pizza.
Lahmajun (Armenian pizza)
Makes 16 lahmajun
Ingredients
This dough recipe has been scaled and adapted from Lavash by Kate Leahy, John Lee and Ara Zada. This is such a fabulous book and one to add to your repertoire if you’re interested in food from Armenia and the Levant.
Old dough
1/2 tsp instant yeast
150g bread flour
150ml lukewarm water (36-40c)
Dough
513ml lukewarm water (36-40c)
2 tbsp neutral oil of choice
4 tsp salt
950g bread flour
Meat topping
450g fresh tomatoes, seeds removed (this will yield roughly 300g), roughly chopped
1 medium sized brown onion, roughly chopped
25g parsley leaves and stems
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp neutral oil of choice
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Aleppo pepper
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/4 tsp ground cumin
500g beef mince
Method
Make the old dough
Combine the above ingredients - it’ll be very wet. Cover with a damp tea towel or cling wrap and let it sit for 2 hours at room temperature until doubled in size.
Make the dough
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the old dough, water, neutral oil and salt and mix with your hands or a spatula until roughly combined.
Fit the mixer with the paddle attachment and add half the flour to the wet mixture, then mix on low until incorporated.
Add the remaining flour and mix again - then cover the bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes to allow the flour to rehydrate.
Switch to the dough hook attachment and knead the dough of medium speed until the dough is pulling away from the sides of the bowl and feel springy and smooth - around 3-4 minutes.
Bulk fermentation
Use a wet hand or a spatula to reposition the dough into the centre of the bowl, pulling the edges around tightly to roughly form a ball. Cover with cling wrap and rest for 2-3 hours or until doubled in volume.
You can also place the dough into the fridge overnight - removing and allowing a couple of hours for the dough to come to temperature before portioning into balls.
Make the meat topping
Combine all of the ingredients besides the mince in a food processor and blitz until you have a sort of paste.
Place the mince in a large bowl, and pour over the tomato mixture. Use your hand to squeeze it all together until completely incorporated. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Portioning the dough
Once the dough has doubled in volume, knock back some of the air by punching the dough. Tip the dough out onto a work surface and portion into 16x 100g pieces.
Roll each piece into a ball by stretching the left and right sides out and folding them to the centre, and repeating with the bottom and top sides facing you. Flip the piece of dough over so the seams are touching the table, then cup your palm around the dough and move your hand in a circle - causing friction between your palm and the table to tighten the dough into a ball.
Final proof
Place the balls onto a lightly oiled baking tray, very lightly brush the tops of the balls with oil and cover with cling wrap. Allow a final proof of about 1 hour or until the balls have puffed up.
Preheat the oven
Preheat the oven to as hot as it will go (for me that’s, 250c fan forced / 270c) and place a baking tray in there for you to cook the lahmajun on.
Shape the lahamjun
Lightly dust your work surface with flour, place a dough ball in front of you and use your fingertips to gently pat the dough into a flat round. Then use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a very thin circle, about 25cm in diameter and just 0.5cm thick. Place this onto a sheet of parchment paper on a chopping board or another tray that you can use to launch the lahmajun into the oven.
Top the dough with 2-3 tbsp of the meat mixture, using the back of a spoon to gently spread this out evenly over the surface of the dough - you don’t want this coverage to be too thick as it needs to cook quickly.
Cooking the lahmajun
Then in one motion, quickly shuffle the parchment paper onto the preheated baking tray, and cook for around 6-8 minutes until the topping is cooked and the edges are slightly browned.
While one lahmajun is baking, start preparing the next one as you will need to make one at a time - a labour of love!!
Place the cooked lahmajun onto a serving tray, stacking them as you cook them - you can cover loosely with alfoil to keep them warm.
To serve
Serve with lemon slices and fresh mint, or any sort of salad topping you like. Growing up we would simply squeeze over lemon juice and roll the lahmajun up, eating like a wrap. Now that I’m older, I do like to fill my lahmajun with herbs and salad, depending what I have around.
Lahmajun are a great dish to make in advance, given how labour intensive it is. You can freeze them (separate each lajmajun with parchment, and store stacked in a ziplock), or store them in the fridge for a few days. To reheat, wrap in alfoil and place in a moderate oven - 160c fan or 180c - for 15 minutes or until warmed through.
