Name: Sangak (Whole-Wheat Flatbread Baked on Hot Pebbles)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Iranian
Ingredients: 100 g wholemeal flour; 100 ml water; 1 g instant yeast; 400 g wholemeal flour; 100 g strong white flour; 400 ml water; 10 g salt; 2 kg pebbles; 50 ml water; 2 tbsp sesame seeds; 1 tbsp black sesame seeds; 1 tbsp poppy seeds

Ingredients

4servings

The starter (the day before)
wholemeal flour100 g
water · lukewarm100 ml
instant yeast · or 100g of a live sourdough starter1 g
The dough (makes 2)
wholemeal flour · coarse; do not cut it with white flour400 g
strong white flour · to put some gluten back100 g
water · about 78% hydration400 ml
salt10 g
For the bake
pebbles · 1.5-3cm river stones, washed and dried2 kg
water · for wetting the surface50 ml
Topping (optional)
sesame seeds2 tbsp
black sesame seeds1 tbsp
poppy seeds1 tbsp

Steps

The day before, mix 100g wholemeal flour, 100ml lukewarm water and 1g yeast and leave at room temperature for 12 hours. Risen and smelling sour is right. Wholemeal bran cuts the gluten network, so sangak buys its flavour and its strength with time instead.
⏲ 240 min
In a large bowl mix the 400g wholemeal, 100g white flour and 400ml water until no dry flour is left, then cover for 30 minutes. In that time the bran takes up water and the gluten lines itself up on its own (dough and gluten).
⏲ 30 min
Add the starter and the salt and fold the dough over on itself in the bowl. Do not knead it. A 78% dough is awkward by hand, and four folds at half-hour intervals do the work instead — focaccia uses the same method.
⏲ 30 min
Prove at room temperature 2–3 hours, until doubled, folding once every half hour.
⏲ 180 min
The stones go into the oven first. Spread the pebbles one layer deep and even across an oven tray and preheat at the highest setting your oven has (250–280°C) for at least 45 minutes. Stones take far longer to charge than a flat surface, and under-heated stones just leave dents.
⏲ 45 min
Divide the dough in two and stretch each with wet hands into a long triangle or rectangle about 1cm thick. Do not use a rolling pin — the bubbles you have built have to survive. Wet the surface and scatter the sesame and poppy seeds.
⏲ 10 min
With wet fingers press deep dimples all over the dough. Those dimples meeting the stones below is what gives the steam a way out from both sides. Be sparing here and the middle balloons and you have made a chapati.
⏲ 2 min
Lay the dough onto the hot stones in one movement and bake 2–4 minutes. If the top is lagging, finish the last minute under the grill. Dark spots on the surface and edges lifting mean it is done.
⏲ 4 min
Lift it with tongs and the stones come up embedded in it. Knock them out on the worktop — in Iranian bakeries the customer does this at a rack beside the till. The craters left behind are what says sangak.
⏲ 1 min
It is a bread for the day it is made. It stiffens as it cools, and a light flick of water plus five minutes between dry cloths brings it back — lavash does the same thing on a far longer timescale.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Sangak sadeh / konjedi: plain is sadeh, the cheapest and commonest in an Iranian bakery. Sesame or poppy seeds on top put the price up.
Kebabi: minced meat or kabab koobideh laid on top and baked with it, so the bread is both the plate and the thing that catches the fat.
Against taftoon: taftoon is white flour enriched with milk and egg and baked against the wall of a clay oven; sangak is wholemeal and water baked on stones in the oven floor. Of the four Iranian breads this is the coarsest and the most sour.
Without stones: small ceramic shards or ceramic baking beads will do. A single pizza stone will not — with no craters in the underside you have made a wholemeal flatbread, not a sangak.
Toast the seeds first: raw seeds do not give up much in two to four minutes. Toasting them beforehand is far better (blooming spices).

Tips

The stones are not there because they are hot; they are there because they touch in points. What your oven is doing gives the mass you preheat a clock of its own, separate from the one the air runs on, and cites this bed of pebbles for it — stones are low in density and wide in surface, so forty-five minutes. Cornbread takes the same line about preheating the tray inside it and pushes it to a cast-iron skillet with hot fat in it. Pebbles are a third case: the contact is interrupted, so each point conducts fiercely while air and steam move through the gaps between them.
Which is why this bread does not puff. Chapati balloons because both faces seal against a dry pan and the steam inside has nowhere to go. Sangak's underside is dimpled by the stones and its top is dimpled by your fingers, so the steam leaves by those routes and the bread stays flat with large holes inside it. Same steam, a different exit.
Wholemeal pays with time. Bran fragments sit between the gluten strands and cut the network (choosing flour) — pumpernickel has the same problem far worse, in rye. So this dough takes an overnight starter, a 30-minute autolyse and four folds instead of a long knead.
Preheat the stones 45 minutes. Stones are less dense and have far more surface than a steel tray, so they take much longer to charge. Dough laid on under-heated stones comes out dented and pale.
The stones last for years. Oil them lightly for the first few bakes; after that do not wash them, just heat them in the oven. Soaking them makes them crack next time.
No rolling pin. It presses out the bubbles the ferment built, and with them the open crumb. Stretch by hand and shape with your fingers.
Fold it while it is hot. In Iran a sangak is folded in half and carried away in paper; at home it goes with feta, walnuts and fresh herbs.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

More of the same kind

Bread →

More from this country

Iranian →