Fatayer - Cheese, mushroom and zataar halaby (thyme)
I've wanted to make some type of middle eastern savoury pastry since I met a charming older Lebanese gentlemen in my physiotherapy sessions back in 2009 who described his family's yearly sfeeha or sfiha making gatherings. Sfeeha are pizza like and filled with meat while a similar pie, called fatayer, is shaped in more creative ways depending on whether it is filled with meat, cheese, spinach, mushrooms or some combination of a couple of these items.
Fatayer Trio - Cheese boats, mushroom half moons and zaatar pizza
My net surfing and accumulating of recipes and ideas has been even more serious since this past January when Sawsan posted her "fatayer jebneh" or cheese pastry. I used her recipe and technique as much as possible with some adjustments which I discuss under the cuts.
I had some problems with Sawsan's recipe getting the pastry to hold together without adding additional water, which is always difficult to do, and usually ends up in tough dough. My oven is very efficient and browns the tops and bottoms so I didn't have to bake it quite as long as required or raise the baking sheet. Ultimately I decided that in future attempts I could use my regular pizza dough recipe, replacing the same amount of total water used with 1/4 cup of vegetable oil and 1/4 cup of yogurt.
Sawsan doesn't say how many fatayer she gets out of her dough (egg sized is a bit vague for me) so I divided the dough in half and divided one half of the dough into 8 even sized portions which I rolled into balls as she described. (I think I could get 10 portions out of each half of the dough for a total of 20 pastries not just 16.) Then I rolled out the balls of risen dough into 6" long ovals and tried to form them into the boat shape. The instructions/diagrams were clear but I just couldn't make them look that good.
So I rolled out the other half of the dough to 1/8" thickness and cut out 4" circles which I shaped a bit differently depending on the filling I used. This is what those fatayer looked like. The cheese fatayer had two sides pinched in to form simple boat forms and 3 pleats were formed at equal distances around the circle to form the mushroom fatayer. I could have sealed the pleats all the way to the center but I decided to leave a small triangular window in the center so you could see the mushrooms peeking out.
Smaller fatayer (mushroom triangles and cheese boats) made from 4" circles cut out from a rectangle formed from half the pastry.
For the cheese filling ... well I threw the recipe suggestions out the window since I didn't have any of the cheeses Sawsan used. I replaced them with what was available in my freezer. My cheese filling was: 1 cup of grated old cheddar cheese, 1 cup crumbled paneer cheese, 2 tbsp minced green onion, a pinch of freshly ground black pepper and 1/8 tsp salt.
If I hadn't had the mushroom filling to use up I would have doubled the amounts (or at least increased them by another 50%).
For the mushroom filling, I used the 2 cups of leftover sauteed mushrooms from my Shooter's Sandwich.
And because I had a last circle of pastry left, I decided to recreate the classic middle eastern zaatar pizza with extra virgin olive oil and zaatar halaby (thyme). I should have pricked the dough before drizzling on the olive oil as the dough had a bulge form during baking. A bit more olive oil over the zaatar would have been good too as the dough was crispy on baking. Or perhaps the dough shouldn't have been rolled that thin (1/4" instead of 1/8").
Fatayer Trio - Cheese boats, mushroom half moons and zaatar pizza
My net surfing and accumulating of recipes and ideas has been even more serious since this past January when Sawsan posted her "fatayer jebneh" or cheese pastry. I used her recipe and technique as much as possible with some adjustments which I discuss under the cuts.
I had some problems with Sawsan's recipe getting the pastry to hold together without adding additional water, which is always difficult to do, and usually ends up in tough dough. My oven is very efficient and browns the tops and bottoms so I didn't have to bake it quite as long as required or raise the baking sheet. Ultimately I decided that in future attempts I could use my regular pizza dough recipe, replacing the same amount of total water used with 1/4 cup of vegetable oil and 1/4 cup of yogurt.
Sawsan doesn't say how many fatayer she gets out of her dough (egg sized is a bit vague for me) so I divided the dough in half and divided one half of the dough into 8 even sized portions which I rolled into balls as she described. (I think I could get 10 portions out of each half of the dough for a total of 20 pastries not just 16.) Then I rolled out the balls of risen dough into 6" long ovals and tried to form them into the boat shape. The instructions/diagrams were clear but I just couldn't make them look that good.
So I rolled out the other half of the dough to 1/8" thickness and cut out 4" circles which I shaped a bit differently depending on the filling I used. This is what those fatayer looked like. The cheese fatayer had two sides pinched in to form simple boat forms and 3 pleats were formed at equal distances around the circle to form the mushroom fatayer. I could have sealed the pleats all the way to the center but I decided to leave a small triangular window in the center so you could see the mushrooms peeking out.
Smaller fatayer (mushroom triangles and cheese boats) made from 4" circles cut out from a rectangle formed from half the pastry.
For the cheese filling ... well I threw the recipe suggestions out the window since I didn't have any of the cheeses Sawsan used. I replaced them with what was available in my freezer. My cheese filling was: 1 cup of grated old cheddar cheese, 1 cup crumbled paneer cheese, 2 tbsp minced green onion, a pinch of freshly ground black pepper and 1/8 tsp salt.
If I hadn't had the mushroom filling to use up I would have doubled the amounts (or at least increased them by another 50%).
For the mushroom filling, I used the 2 cups of leftover sauteed mushrooms from my Shooter's Sandwich.
And because I had a last circle of pastry left, I decided to recreate the classic middle eastern zaatar pizza with extra virgin olive oil and zaatar halaby (thyme). I should have pricked the dough before drizzling on the olive oil as the dough had a bulge form during baking. A bit more olive oil over the zaatar would have been good too as the dough was crispy on baking. Or perhaps the dough shouldn't have been rolled that thin (1/4" instead of 1/8").