The secret to lahmacun crispier than a stone oven: A homemade recipe

The key to crisp homemade lahmacun, according to this recipe, is not yeast or a stone oven. It is very thin unleavened dough, a juicy topping and an intensely heated baking tray turned upside down.

The dough uses four cups of all-purpose flour, one and a half cups of room-temperature water and a teaspoon of salt. After about 10 minutes of kneading, it should rest under a damp cloth for at least 45 minutes so the gluten relaxes and the dough rolls out more easily.

The topping combines 400 grams of medium-fat minced meat with onions, green and red peppers, peeled tomatoes, parsley, garlic, tomato and pepper pastes, oil, water and spices. The vegetables should not be puréed in a food processor. Instead, the recipe calls for chopping them very finely by hand, in the style of traditional zırhlama, then mixing them gently with the meat. The finished mixture should remain slightly loose and spreadable.

For the stone-oven trick, the black oven tray is placed upside down on the middle rack and heated at the oven's highest fan setting, generally 250°C, for 30 minutes. Small dough balls are rolled out thinly, topped with two or three spoonfuls of the mixture and slid onto the hot tray using a wooden spatula or pizza peel.

The sudden heat from below crisps the dough while the heat above cooks the meat. The lahmacun should be ready when its edges brown, after roughly five to seven minutes. The recipe suggests serving it with plenty of parsley, onion salad, lemon and foamy ayran.