Vegan Flatbread Recipe: Egyptian Bread of Life

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This whole wheat Egyptian recipe for flatbread puffs up like a balloon and is fun to serve to the kids and the young at heart! The name, Aish Baladi, means the Bread of Life. It’s a vegan flatbread similar to pita bread, is easy to stuff, and holds fillings without leaking. Serve it with soup, vegetables, make a hummus and pickle sandwich… This healthy whole wheat Egyptian bread is hearty, filling, fragrant, and high in protein and fiber.

This is a forgiving and straight-forward recipe for flatbread. The one feature that is different from making a loaf of bread is the baking process. The dough is divided into 8 parts that are rolled out like a tortilla and then baked in a hot oven, ideally on a pizza stone, but a baking sheet will do too.

 If you’ve made bread with 100% whole wheat you may have found that they can be grainy, lacking the long chains of gluten proteins that make bread spongy and hold together. To ameliorate this, many whole-wheat recipes include a stage called proofing the sponge. This step mixes in half the flour until it resembles a thick cake batter consistency that you stir for a few minutes, causing the gluten proteins to stick together and make those long chains you’ll appreciate in the texture and integrity of a yeast flatbread. After this sponge rises, you add the rest of the flour and knead it like any bread dough.

 Our daughter recently sent us a package of spices she acquired on a recent trip to Egypt. It inspired this exploration into some new Egyptian foods, including this recipe for flatbread. We served it slathered with a spice blend called Zatar and served it with a delicious Egyptian Vegan Bean Stew. I say delicious with confidence because our boys had 3 helpings of it at dinner!

1. Make the sponge and let it rise.

2. Mix in the rest of the flour, knead and rise until double in size.

3. Divide the dough into 8 equal parts. 

4. Roll the dough out on parchment paper into 1/8" thick circles. 

5. Bake and watch them puff up!

6. Serve slathered with Za'atar and alongside a hearty Egyptian Inspired Vegan Bean Stew.

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Jump to Egyptian Vegan Flatbread Nutritional Analysis

Egyptian Vegan Recipe for Flatbread

Prep

• 2.5 hours prep
• Serves 8
• Suggested equipment: mixing bowl, parchment paper, pizza stone or baking sheet, rolling pin

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 1.5 tsp active dry yeast
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1.5 tsp oil (we use olive oil)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 ¼ cup warm water, use more or less to achieve the right consistency

Instructions

1. In a mixing bowl, add 1 cup of warm water, the sugar, and yeast. Stir and let rest until frothy, about 10 minutes.
2. Add 1 ¼ cups of flour and stir for 3 minutes until the dough feels sticky and stretches into stringy lengths of dough. Cover and let rise 30 minutes in a warm place.
3. Add the oil, salt, and remaining flour. Knead for 10 minutes, adding more water or flour as necessary to have a smooth ball of soft dough.
4. Slather with olive oil, cover, and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about an hour.
5. Heat your oven to 500F (260C). Pre-heat the surface you’ll be cooking your flatbread on in the oven too.
6. Divide dough into 8 equal parts. If you have parchment paper, cut it into 8 squares 8”x8” (20x20 cm).
7. Using a rolling pin, roll each ball out onto a piece of parchment paper to about 1/8” (2 mm) thick. If it’s thicker than this it may not puff up when you cook it. This isn’t a bad thing! It’s also delicious this way. Experiment and make it how you want it.
8. When the oven is hot, place the flatbread and its parchment paper backing on the hot cooking surface. Cooking time varies depending on your cooking surface but will be less than 6 minutes. You’ll be cooking in batches. Cool the flatbread on a rack.

Chef's Notes 

Zatar, or Za’atar, is an Egyptian spice blend that brightens up hummus, bread, our favorite Egyptian Vegan Bean Stew, vegetables, grilled foods… If you can find a Zatar blend locally, purchase it and use liberally! A simple Zatar has oregano, roasted sesame seed, sumac, coriander, and salt.  Some recipes include thyme, marjoram, and lemon zest too. Zatar may very well become your new favorite spice blend! We mixed equal amounts of olive oil with Zatar to make a paste that we slathered on our vegan flatbread. I believe the boys would have eaten it with a spoon, given the chance!

You can slather on the Za'atar before cooking too!

Make your own Za’atar:

Mix together

            1 Tbsp thyme

            1 tsp sumac

            1 tsp toasted sesame seeds

            ¼ tsp salt

            a pinch of red pepper

Mix with 1 Tbsp of olive oil to make a thick paste.

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Written by Your Vegan Family 

Stacy and Markus live an adventurous vegan lifestyle and write articles about their experiences cooking global vegan cuisine, creating businesses, raising vegan kids, and traveling through more than 65 countries. They earned degrees in molecular biology and acupuncture, consulted over decades for healthcare companies and individuals, created businesses in Asian medicine, eco-tourism, cultural immersion, and taught yoga in myriad venues.

We’ve learned a lot from eating a plant-based diet for 25 years and are eager to share more with you. Learn more on our About Us page.

Egyptian Vegan Flatbread Recipe Grocery List: 

• whole wheat flour
• active dry yeast
• sugar
• oil
• salt

Egyptian Vegan Flatbread Recipe Nutritional Analysis

The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutritional calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. When exact ingredients are not available in this database, the closest substitution is made. 

Percentages are based on a 2,000 calorie daily diet for an adult. 

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