Lagana
A Greek bread traditionally baked for Clean Monday, which opens Lent. It is always free of dairy and eggs, flat, covered in sesame and pitted with rows of dimples. The dimples are not just decoration: they release the big gas bubbles, so the bread rises evenly and stays flat instead of doming. Lagana should be flat and springy with a crisp sesame crust — a fasting bread, plainer than fluffy festive loaves.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Dough 15 min
- Folding and rising 120 min
- Shaping 45 min
- Baking 20 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneDissolve the yeast and mix the dough
Dissolve the yeast with the sugar in the warm water, wait 10 minutes and mix with the flour, oil and salt, just until no dry flour remains. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky — there is less flour here than instinct suggests, and it should stay that way.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 340 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 50 ml olive oil · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
Fold the dough instead of kneading
Instead of kneading, fold the dough in the bowl with olive-oiled hands, four times at 10-minute intervals — this is the first 40 minutes of the rise. A wet dough develops gluten on its own over time, so folding is enough and needs no flour, which would stiffen it.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 340 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 50 ml olive oil · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
Folding with oiled hands instead of kneading.Leave until doubled
After the last fold, cover and leave somewhere warm for about 80 minutes (about 2 hours from mixing in all), until doubled and covered in bubbles. Lagana is flat, but the rise still matters — it gives flavour and a soft, springy crumb.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 340 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 50 ml olive oil · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
Stretch into flat ovals
Divide the dough in two and stretch each piece by hand into an oval about 1.5 cm thick, straight onto a paper-lined, oiled tray — one oval per tray. Do not use a rolling pin — it knocks out the air that gives the crumb its open structure.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 340 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 50 ml olive oil · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
Wait 30 minutes before dimpling
Leave the ovals 30 minutes under a cloth and heat the oven to 220°C meanwhile. The dough must relax — in taut dough the dimples fill back in within minutes and the work is wasted.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 340 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 50 ml olive oil · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
Press deep dimples in rows
Press your fingers deep, right down to the tray, in even rows across the whole surface. The dimples release the big gas bubbles, so the lagana bakes evenly and stays flat instead of doming.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 340 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 50 ml olive oil · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
Fingers to the tray — the dimples keep the bread flat.Brush with water and cover in sesame
Brush the top with water, not oil, and scatter sesame generously (plus the nigella, if using), pressing the seeds down with your palm. On oil the sesame slides off easily, while dough brushed with water holds it well. There should be a great deal of it.
Ingredients: 80 g sesame seeds · 3 tbsp water · 2 tbsp olive oil · 1 tsp nigella seeds
Water, not oil — sesame sticks better to damp dough.Bake hot and briefly
Bake 18–20 minutes at 220°C, until the sesame turns golden. If both trays will not fit at once, bake them one after the other, or together with the fan at 210°C, swapping them halfway. High heat and a short bake give a crisp crust and a soft centre — longer and the lagana dries into a rusk.
Ingredients: 80 g sesame seeds · 3 tbsp water · 2 tbsp olive oil · 1 tsp nigella seeds
Before you start
A bread for one day a year
Lagana is baked in Greece for Kathara Deftera, Clean Monday, and eaten with taramasalata, olives and seafood — foods permitted on the first day of the fast. Bakeries sell it mainly around that day.
The unleavened version
According to tradition, lagana was once an unleavened flatbread, made without yeast or sourdough. That lagana is hard and thin, closer to a cracker. The yeasted version is today's standard.
Best the same day
Lagana is low in fat and stales fast — superb on the first day, dry by the second. Slice it then and toast it, or grind it into sesame breadcrumbs, which are excellent.
