Hungarian langos recipe – make this delicious Hungarian flatbread at home
What is langos?
It was literally the very first thing we were served during our food tour of Taste Hungary: a freshly fried crispy langos. Hungarian fried bread or Hungarian pizza are also commonly used names. And I was immediately sold. That crispy crust coated with garlic, sour cream and grated cheese. So incredibly delicious. You just want that over and over again. At the market where we ate our first langos, they sold this fried bread in all forms. With the sour cream as I mentioned but also topped as a whole pizza.
History
Langos probably comes from the time when Hungarians still baked their bread in stone ovens. They sometimes kept a piece of the bread dough to make a breakfast-like flatbread. The name derives from where the bread was prepared. Close to the láng, the flame, of the oven. Apart from Hungary it is also known in the Czech Republic.
As home baking became less common, langos changed from something you make at home to a deep-fried street food snack eaten and topped like pizza. Traditionally, it is first rubbed with garlic before the sour cream and grated cheese comes on top. Right now it is probably one of the most famous Hungarian street food recipes. You can easily find it with various street vendors around Hungary or at least in Budapest where I first ate it.
How do you make langos at home?
Making langos yourself is not necessarily more complicated than making your own bread. Now I should immediately add that making bread is not exactly my strong point. I usually lack patience with the result that I don’t knead the bread long enough. And then it doesn’t rise well enough and I’m left with a less than appealing bread. Or a loaf you could easily use to bash someones head in. Not what you want to eat for sure. So I was very curious to see how it would go this time with making the lángos recipe.
Kneading, kneading, kneading
I made the langos this time in the Kitchen Aid. I personally don’t think it’s the best device for kneading dough but at least it did the prep work. I let the dough knead in the machine with the dough hook attached for about five minutes, but it was still very sticky and not nice and smooth. So I continued the kneading on the countertop by hand and added some more flour. When I thought it was good enough I put the dough ball in a large bowl covered with a little vegetable oil and covered it with a tea towel. After an hour I looked in the bowl and victory!
There are several ways of making the dough; you can place everything together in a large mixing bowl and use a wooden spoon to do the first mixing. You can then transfer to a stand mixer and finish the kneading there. Or you can do the whole thing by hand. As mentioned I like to do both, but it does depend on the quality of your standmixer.
Rise baby rise
My dough had risen nicely and had definitely doubled in size. The rest is pretty much child’s play. Just make sure you use a frying pan that is large enough and the oil is hot enough before you add the a piece of dough, otherwise it will take too long and your bread will get soggy. Let it fry until it is golden brown and then carefully remove it from the hot oil. It’s also best to let the bread drain on paper towels before you spread the topping on it.
Let it cool just a bit, spread with lots of sour cream and plenty of grated cheese, and away you go! Do you have any leftovers? Then pop it in the toaster before eating it. Obviously you can eat it with different toppings and your imagination is the only thing holding you back. It’s also delicious to rub it with a little bit of garlic oil or use a clove of garlic cut in two and use that to rub the warm bread before you add other toppings.
You could even make this recipe for flatbread with the langos as well.
It’s basically a deep-fried flatbread and I also love it with nothing more than a bit of oil and a little salt. It’s that tasty.
Hungarian langos
Ingredients
- 2 potatoes boiled and mashed. Keep warm
- 2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
- 1 tsp sugar
- 210 gr flour
- 1 tsp oil
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 120 ml milk
- sunflower oil for frying
- 2 cloves of garlic halved
- sour cream
- grated cheese
Instructions
- Put the still warm mashed potato in a bowl along with the yeast, sugar, flour oil, salt and milk. You can make it in a machine or do it by hand. I made it in the Kitchen Aid and then did some kneading by hand.
- Knead the dough for about 5-7 minutes with the machine until it is a smooth dough. If you knead by hand you will probably need a little longer.
- If it’s too sticky keep kneading a little longer and add a little extra flour if necessary. Then transfer the dough to a clean bowl rubbed with oil and cover with a clean tea towel.
- Let the dough rise for an hour or until doubled in volume.
- Then divide the dough into four pieces. Then make balls of these and place them on a board dusted with flour, cover and let rise for another 20 minutes.
- Take a large frying pan and heat a generous layer of oil to 180˚C (350˚F)
- Flatten each ball and stretch it a bit. Then fry golden brown in the oil. Once out of the oil, brush with the sliced garlic cloves, spread with the cream and sprinkle with the grated cheese.
Nutrition Information
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
