Fatayer Dough

Fatayer are the perfect, crowd-thrilling party food. They are easy-to-pick-up finger foods that are filled with meat, or cheese, or spinach. Unlike Turkish pide, which is supposed to be crunchy, fatayer are soft, fluffy and tender. Fatayer take different shapes based on the type of filling. The convention is to make meat fatayer into square shapes, cheese fatayer into boat shapes, and spinach fatayer into triangular ones. Not everyone follows that rule and our Syrian neighbour in Jeddah, who taught us how to make fatayer, made boat-shaped meat fatayer .

Um Ayman made perfect fatayer and up till today, we have not seen any fatayer that can compare to hers. In fact, it is not just the fatayer but every recipe she taught us was special and incredibly delicious. Whenever she cooked anything, you could tell that she put her heart in it. We try to rise to her standards and we are lucky that some of her passion has rubbed on us.

The dough is easy to prepare, easy to knead, and easy to work with. It can be prepared a day ahead and refrigerated. Rolling out fatayer does not need special rolling skills. You can flatten the dough with your fingers and a rolling pin is not even necessary.

This dough does not need much time to rise. All it needs is 10 to 15 minutes of rest before shaping and filling the fatayer. All instant yeast are not created equal and we recommend that you use good quality yeast that has been properly stored. Store unopened packages in a cool, dry place and once opened, refrigerate or freeze in an airtight container.

You can adjust the recipe based on your preferences. For example, you can eliminate the sugar, reduce or eliminate the salt, use vegetable oil, use a combination of powdered milk and water instead of the milk, use low-fat milk, and so on.

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