Woodfired Flatbread with Garlic Mushrooms and Za’atar
What a treat for you in this woodfired workshop – David is cooking a super garlicky mushroom flatbread, topped with toasted almonds and a swirl of spicey za’atar. Fantastic to share with friends or, we think, it would make an awesome breakfast with a poached egg on top.
A fabulous combination of three of our favourite things –
- creamy, rich slowly fermented dough for the flatbread, dibbled and stretched with olive oil
- mushrooms cooked with garlic until reduced and intensely flavoured
- a hit of spice at the end, in this case delicious za’atar combining sesame seeds, thyme and sumac
Check out how we made it on our youtube channel here and the recipe is below. We used the refractory oven – the Bushman Santorini – but it will obviously work well in a metal oven as well; just make sure you have a good bed of embers to keep the heat up during cooking. And you can cook it in your regular oven as well – just preheat it to around 220C. Do let us know how you get on – we love to hear from you!
And remember we have lots more flatbreads in our Woodfired Flatbreads and Pancakes
Ingredients
For the dough – 3 leftover pizza dough balls (200g each) or a dough made and left overnight with 360g 00 flour, 240g water, 3g dried yeast and 6g salt
2 red onions, peeled and thinly sliced
200g mixed mushrooms – we used regular white mushrooms and shitake – thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed and mixed with 2tbsp olive oil
2 handfuls fresh spinach leaves, washed and drained
2tbsp chopped fresh parsley
30g flaked almonds
2tsp za’atar – bought or homemade
4tbsp olive oil plus a little more for drizzling at the end
Plenty of semolina
Salt and pepper
Oven State and Equipment
3 -4 Mississippi – around 220-250C with the oven well heated
Heat deflector to keep the oven tidy and prevent sidescorch
Frying pan to cook the topping – we like using our Netherton prospector pan
Silicon sheet – about 30x20cm
Extra kindling to reheat the oven if needed
Method
- Take the dough out of the fridge and put in an oiled bowl, covered, to come to room temperature and start to rise.
- Heat the frying pan or whatever you are using in the oven. Put a small pan in there to heat up as well.
- Mix the onions and the mushrooms with the 4tbsp olive oil and when the pan is hot, add them with the garlic oil, put the pan back in the oven and cook until softened and well reduced in size. Door ajar.
- Put the flaked almonds in the small pan and toast them until golden brown. Cool until needed.
- While the veggies are cooking, sprinkle plenty of semolina on to the silicon sheet and upend the bowl holding the dough on top of the semolina. Let the dough fall out on its own.
- Dibble and gently stretch out the dough, leaving it to rest and relax , covered, between bouts of stretching until it covers the silicon sheet. Don’t be too vigorous as you want it nice and puffy.
- When the mushrooms are reduced, stir in the spinach and let it wilt in the heat of the oven. Take the pan out of the voen and stir in the chopped parsley and season the mixture well with salt and pepper. Let it cool for 10 minutes.
- Reheat the oven by putting the kindling on top of the embers behind the heat deflector. Add a bit of oxygen through a blowpipe to ignite the kindling if necessary.
- Put the mushroom topping on top of the stretched out dough and spread the topping to the edges.
- Use a large peel to move the dough on the silicon sheet into the oven and bake in the oven with the door almost shut but slightly ajar for 12-15 minutes, turning the dough round on the silicon sheet half way through cooking. After this time, take the flatbread off the silicon sheet and cook it on the oven floor for a couple of minutes to make sure the base is dried out.
- Take the flatbread out of the oven and sprinkle it with the za’atar and the toasted almonds. Drizzle over a little more olive oil, cut into pieces and serve with salad for lunch or supper.
Alternatives
- Use different herbs instead of the parsley – chives, tarragon, rosemary all work well or try a mixture, maybe even a bit of mint in the mix – delicious!
- Try a different spice flavour instead of the za’atar – a hit of chilli or maybe a touch of ras el hanout
- Finely zest the skin of a lemon and sprinkle that over at the end of cooking
- Use chard or kale instead of the spinach but make sure they are well cooked as the stalks are tough!
- Use different kinds of mushrooms or add a few rehydrated dried wild mushrooms, finely chopped, for some more umami intensity
- Reduce or increase the amount of garlic you use, depending on how much you like it!
- This is perfect for feeding vegetarians and vegans but you can obviously add a little meat if you like – how about a little chopped pepperoni or ham or a few bacon lardons.