Aysh Abu Laham - Saudi Vegetarian Meat Pizza

Am kick starting a month of blogging marathon from today, yes you read it rite, i will be running blogging marathon during this whole month of April. Every year, April and September, we marathoners run 26days of blogging with interesting themes. And this month's blogging marathon theme was A-Z Baking around the world with different baked goodies in Alphabetical order. Obviously i have finalised my baking list since three months back as i can bake only during weekends coz of my busy schedule. Usually pre-planning never worked for me, but fortunately this time, pre-planning worked awesome. Seriously i dont want to skip this whole month of blogging marathon as the theme of this mega marathon is something close to my heart coz of my love for baking. If you love baking very much and you have to pick a bake from a country that too in alphabetical order who will say 'no', definitely not me. Hence am running this fantastic blogging marathon with loads of enthuasism. For the first day of this Mega marathon, i baked some fantastic Vegetarian/Vegan Soya Meat Pizza from Saudi Arabia.

Aysh Abu Laham is an Arabian version of  pizza,traditionally this Saudi Pizza goes for Meat topping especially the Lamb meat. Though this dish is named as Saudi Pizza, some calls this pizza as Meat bread. Aysh means bread in Saudi and laham means meat. This recipe is quite popular in Hijaz area of Saudi Arabia and most particularly in Mecca. Usually baked as thick and large pies, the original recipe went for making small sized mini Pizza. A leavened dough is a must and this dough is seasoned with grounded caraway and cumin, which is later topped usually with grounded meat mixture spiced with a tahini sauce, spring onions, tomatoes and poppy seeds. Since i dont want to bake this Saudi pizza with meat mixture, i went with minced soya meat which replace very well any sort of minced meat in many foods. Most of us knows very well about the Tahini sauce which is a sesame seed paste prepared with grounded toasted sesame seeds. Though tahini sauce is easily available in stores, its not seriously hard to prepare ourselves at home obviously i went with homemade tahini sauce. Since I skipped the meat part, i couldnt stop myself to add some chopped bellpeppers to make this Saudi pizza more flavourful and delicious. No cheese is added hence my version of vegetarian pizza is completely vegan.

Recipe Source: Here
Dough:
3cups All purpose flour
1/2tbsp Instant yeast
1tsp Sugar
1/2tsp Salt
1/4tsp Cumin powder
1/4tsp Grounded caraway
1/4cup Olive oil
1+1/2cup Luke warm water

Take the flour, yeast, sugar, salt, cumin powder,grounded caraway in a large bowl, add in the olive oil, luke warm water and mix everything well.

Pull the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead the dough well until the dough turns smooth and elastic.

Grease a bowl and arrange dough in it, cover it with a towel and keep in warm place to double their size atleast for 2 hours.

Topping:
2cups Minced soya meat (cooked and drained)
2 Onions (chopped)
1cup Bellpeppers (chopped)
2nos Garlic cloves (crushed as paste)
1tsp Salt
2 Tomatoes (chopped finely)
4tbsp Tahini sauce/sesame paste
2tbsp Lemon juice
1/2tsp Pepper powder
1/2cup Green onions (chopped)
1tbsp Black poppy seeds (for garnishing)
Olive oil

In a pan, heat olive oil, add the minced soya meat and cook for few seconds, add in the onions, chopped bellpepper,garlic paste, pepper powder, salt and cook until the onions turns transculent.

Add the spring onions, tomatoes  and cook for few minutes and put off the stove.

Meanwhile, take the tahini sauce, lemon juice in a bowl, mix well. Add this mixture to the already prepared soya meat mixture and mix well.

Now divide this soya meat topping as 6 equal portions and keep aside.

Assembling:
Punch down the doubled dough and divide the dough into 6portion. Roll it a medium sized disc and puffy edges.

Top the discs with enough soya meat topping. Arrange them one by one with enough space in between on a baking travy lined with a baking sheet.

Let it sit for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Sprinkle the poppy seeds on the top of toppings. Bake this Saudi pizza for 20-25minutes until the crust turns golden brown.

Enjoy warm.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 75

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