Advertisement
4–5
Easy
By Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt
Published 2021
A delicious rustic pastry, very similar to (and some say the ancient cousin of) the Spanish torta de aceite. Traditionally, freshly made and still-warm saj bread was topped with sugar, then doused and rubbed well with olive oil until the sugar dissolved, hence the name “mafrouka,” or “rubbed.” Here we brush the rounds of saj with oil as they bake, resulting in a crispier pastry—but feel free to try the original method, too!