Breakfast pizza: Manouche, Lebanon's favorite pastry

A breakfast pizza in the Mediterranean doesn't only mean the famous Italian pizza. You'll find many different pastries such as the Lebanese manouche, the Catalan coca, or the Turkish lahmacun.

Those breakfast foods are delicious pastries and turnovers topped or filled with a variety of seasonal vegetables, white cheese, olive oil, ground lamb meat, sausage, herbs...

In their countries of origin you can buy a breakfast pizza at the bakery, but you can make the crust dough yourself at home too. Next, you top these healthy pies with your preferred Mediterranean diet foods, bake it,... and devour it! It's quite easy actually.

Below I give you the recipe for the Lebanese breakfast pizza called manouche. Interestingly, it's similar to the Majorcan and Catalan homemade pie called coca.

You'll probably see manouche written in different ways: manoushe, manoush, man'oushe. They all refer to the same Lebanese pie.

Ingredients for this breakfast pizza

Serves 4

• 2 1/4 cups (500 g) flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon active dried yeast
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/4 cup (30 cl) lukewarm water

• 4 cups wild thyme or 1 cup dried thyme – ground
• 1 cup sesame seeds – toasted
• 1 ½ Mediterranean sumac berry – ground
• 1 tablespoon salt – ground
• 1/2 cup olive oil

If you don't have access to the Mediterranean sumac berry leave it out. The pastry still tastes very good.

Breakfast pizza preparation method

Preparation time: 30 minutes.
Cooking time: 7 to 10 minutes.

1. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water and set aside for about 5 minutes.


2. Add the flour to a mixing bowl. Add the salt and mix well with your hands or a spoon. Add the sugar and mix well.


3. Add the olive oil and start kneading with your hands. Slowly add the yeast water while you continue kneading. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes, or until you get an elastic soft dough.


4. Grease a large bowl with some olive oil and put the dough in it. Cover and let it rise in a warm place with no air drafts for one and a half to two hours, or until it doubles its volume.


5. Punch down the dough and divide it into 4 balls. Allow them to rise 30 more minutes.


6. Use your palms to flatten the balls. Roll out to about a circle of ten inch (25 cm) in diameter.

1. Add the zaatar ingredients to a mortar and pound and mix them well.


2. Blend the thyme mixture with the 1/2 cup olive oil until you get a creamy consistency


3. Put the dough circles on a baking sheet. Spread the mixture on the dough.


4. Preheat the oven to 400 ºF (200 ºC). Bake the breakfast pizza for 7 to 10 minutes.

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