A domed iron griddle, convex side up, set over a fire. It is not an ingredient — it is the tool that makes markook, the paper-thin mountain bread that gets stretched over the baker's knuckles until it is nearly translucent.
Also known as saaj · markook · markouk · khubz al saj · mountain bread
Every Sofra recipe is free to read here on the web. The app carries an Ingredient Atlas covering dozens of Levantine ingredients — in English, Arabic and Portuguese, with the name in French and Spanish too — alongside a free collection of 112 recipes to cook from.
Get Sofra — free download →The bread itself is barely seasoned — flour, water, salt — so what you taste is the fire. Cooked in seconds on a very hot dome, it takes on scorch marks and a faint smoky bitterness at the blisters that a pan cannot reproduce.
Texture is the whole point. Fresh markook is astonishingly pliable and can be rolled around anything; a few hours later it is brittle enough to snap.
34 Sofra recipes use it in all — browse the collection.
Domestic sajes are sold by Middle Eastern kitchenware suppliers and online, in gas-fired and electric versions. They are large, and the electric ones rarely get hot enough to blister the dough properly.
The bread is easier to find than the griddle. Lebanese and Syrian bakeries make markook fresh and sell it folded in stacks; it freezes well if you separate the sheets, which is what most households do.
A saj is a domed iron griddle, set convex side up over a fire, used to bake very thin flatbread. It is a piece of equipment rather than an ingredient.
Markook is the paper-thin bread baked on a saj. It is stretched until nearly translucent, cooks in seconds, and is soft and pliable when fresh. It is also called khubz al saj or mountain bread.
Not really, but you can get close with a large upturned wok or a carbon-steel pan over high heat. What you lose is the size of the sheet and the fire.
From Lebanese and Syrian bakeries, usually folded in stacks. It freezes well if you separate the sheets first, which is what most households do.
Hours, not days. It dries brittle quickly. Freeze it the day you buy it if you are not going to use it.
Wrapping grilled meat and kibbeh nayeh, scooping dips, and torn into fattoush. It is a utensil as much as a bread.
