Lebanese Talame bi Zaatar (Lisa Mael's bread)

Zaatar is a wonderful Moroccan spice mixture that I literally sought at the ends of the world, only to find it in my backyard.

I had a Joan Nathan recipe for red snapper requiring this particular mixture, which includes sumac, sesame, and various other tasty items.  It was nowhere to be found at conventional grocery stores or health food stores here in tiny Bloomsburg.  I tried making the recipe skipping this ingredient, and it was both expensive (red snapper, it turns out, doesn't come cheap) and awful. This was particularly disappointing since I had to drive all the way to Wilkes-Barre with a cooler to buy the fish.

A couple years later, I went on a family cruise on a tall ship around the Iberian peninsula. We sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea; back in the days of ancient Greeks, those straits were thought to be the end of the world, one of the guides told me.  One of the stops was Tangiers, Morocco.  Aha! I thought.  Here, I'll surely find zaatar.  But again, no luck.  The merchants looked at me blankly when I named the spice in my American accent.  In the end, we took a wild guess and bought a bag of yellow powder that we thought might be some exotic spice, but that turned out to taste like dish soap.

But within a year after that trip, Spices Inc. opened up in Bloomsburg, about one block from my house.  It's designed to be mail order, but local folks can walk in to pick up their spices and save on delivery charges.  And, you guessed it, they sell zaatar.  Along with lots of wonderful exotic stuff!

This particular recipe comes from my friend Lisa Mael, who got it from King Arthur Flour.  It's delicious, especially with the hummus and baba ghanoush recipes that I'm also posting on this blog.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 Cup (9 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons (.6 oz) sugar
1 teaspoon instant yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons warm water
Extra virgin olive oil
Zaatar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven with a baking stone to 500 degrees

2. Oil a piece of parchment paper well with olive oil.

3. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt.

4. Add all of the water and using your dough scraper, mix and fold the dough until just combined.

5. Cover and let rise 30  minutes.

6. Using a dough scraper, turn the dough out onto the oiled parchment paper and flip dough to cover both sides with oil. Using your fingertips, dimple the top of the dough and pour more olive oil in the depressions. Top dough with zaatar.

7. Bake on hot pizza stone for about 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.