Flatbreads are the perfect alternative to dough-heavy, pepperoni-loaded pizzas. Plus they’re much easier to make in your own kitchen, where you can play with the ingredients. The spicy and adventurous flavors of African cuisine taste delicious on the sweet flatbread dough. Here are 10 African-inspired flatbreads.
Harissa, Cured-Olive and Preserved-Lemon Flatbread
We love the cured olives and preserved lemon in this recipe because, you’d find those on a big Moroccan appetizer platter, usually with hummus and pita. But here, the preserved lemon lightens up the bitter flavor of the olives, and the harissa — Tunisian hot chili pepper paste — gives a nice spicy base.
Lamb is a very popular meat in African countries, and the sauce for this flatbread is packed with spices you find in African cuisine such as cumin, garlic and cayenne pepper. But the distinct African feature is in mixing the sweetness associated with cinnamon with the savory meat flavor.
Cooked dates are a signature African ingredient. They become extra sweet when cooked, and fall apart like they would in a compote, making them perfect on this cheesy flatbread. The rosemary and onions give just the right amount of savory and herbaceous flavors.
This is a pizza that’s served up at Tara Kitchen in Schenectady, New York, but you could easily recreate it at home. In Moroccan cuisine, you’ll find a lot of couscous dishes with stewed prunes, honey, meat and vegetables. This flatbread is like the vegetarian version, but on a flatbread. And it’s delicious.
This pizza has tons of delicious ingredients such as orange marmalade, spinach and goat cheese, but it’s spiced up with cardamom and fennel, and has the unique taste of dates on top with a little crunch from the blanched almonds.
Berber pizza is a classic North African dish. It’s a covered pizza, sort of like an open, flat calzone with thinner dough. The filling is simple and light with several spices, onions and olive oil and it’s best served as an appetizer.
Biltong is Africa’s version of beef jerky, and it adds a delicious smoky flavor to this pizza. The robust tomato sauce is the perfect thing to complement the bold meat taste, and the avocados add a nice cool and creamy taste.
This is another recipe that calls for biltong but will remind you more of an Italian or American pizza, if that’s what you’re craving, because it has pepperoni too. Along with biltong and pepperoni, you have red bell peppers, tomato paste and African blue basil for a rich and spicy flatbread.
This pizza incorporates ingredients from the others on this list, but tops everything off with cool and creamy Greek yogurt, which is healthier than dipping your pizza in ranch dressing.
The toppings on this pizza are delicious summer vegetables such as zucchini, cherry tomatoes and bell pepper, but it’s the dough that makes it North African. It’s a semolina and olive-oil dough. Semolina is another name for durum wheat, and it’s sweet and a little bit herbaceous.