It is made of few ingredients. Some recipes call out for flour only and others use a mixture of flour and fine semolina. The amount of semolina or flour varies from one recipe to another.
I usually make the batbout without measuring anything but for the purpose of writing this recipe, I measured everything.
Batbout is very good for breakfast with jelly, butter, honey, cream cheese,…etc
It is excellent as an appetizer or even lunch or dinner while filled with a variety of sandwich fillings. Batbout is a bread, it can be eaten with almost anything.
This traditional bread is mostly present on the Ramadan table. It can be made ahead of time and can freeze easily.
Moroccan Traditional bread – Batbout
Ingredients
- 1 cup fine semolina
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 1 tsp dry active yeast
- 1 tsp olive oil plus more
- 2 1/2 cups to 3 cups warm water (more or less)
Instructions
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In a bowl of a stand mixer, sift the flour, semolina and salt. Mix with a spoon.
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Add yeast and sugar.
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Add warm water, start with 1 cup.
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Use a hook attachment on the stand mixer to knead the dough while adding water, a little at the time.
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Knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Once it is soft, stop adding the water. Depending of your semolina and flour, you may need more or less water. In this recipe I have used about 3 cups water.
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The dough becomes smooth and a little sticky. You may choose to not have a sticky dough by adding less water.
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Oil your hand with 1 teaspoon olive oil and gather the dough into a ball.
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Cover the bowl with kitchen towel and let the dough rest for 5 minutes.
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Put fine semolina on your working board and dump the dough on it. Deflate it.
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Form small balls of dough (the size is your choice).
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Cover the balls of dough with kitchen towel and let rest again for 5 minutes.
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Roll out each ball into a small disc of about 1/8 inch thick. Use fine semolina while rolling out the balls.
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Place the dough discs on a clean kitchen towel. Cover and let rise for at least 1 hour or until almost doubled in volume.
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Place a griddle or a large non stick pan over medium heat and cook the bread or batbout in batches. You may need to reduce the temperature to low if the batbout or bread starts to burn. The bread puffs up as it cooks and forms a pocket.
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Make sure to clean the griddle or the pan as there is some semolina in it.
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Cook both sides until golden. Make sure to cook the edges.
Recipe Notes
- If you want your bread or Batbout to have the same size, just roll out the dough into thin big disc and cut out small discs with a round cookie cutter or even a cup.
Can substitute semolina with oat?
It’s always worth trying it(make a small amount for testing), but I never tried it to be honest!