Za’atar snails: The delicious party snack
Za’atar is a really fine thing. Whether as manakish (za’atar bread), on labneh or simply for dipping in olive oil – the mixture of thyme, sesame and sumac is a real all-rounder of oriental cuisine. And now – let’s make finger food out of it, which your friends will definitely ask you for …
What’s better at a party than a whole buffet full of finger food? That’s right! Finger food that you don’t know yet, but somehow looks familiar.
With this recipe, I am leaving familiar territory and daring to experiment. Frankly, it is not a classic Lebanese recipe, but a fusion. I took my cue from pizza buns and replaced the pizza stuff with the zatar mixture from the manakish recipe. Buahahaha!
I then served the result to a friend. Her comment was: “OMG om Nom Nom Nom Rafik Nom om Nom …” or something like that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand her very well. I think it went down quite well.
So for the next celebration, I’ll definitely have a whole load of these lovely rolls – perhaps in combination with a fresh labneh dip?
Recipe for Za’atar snails

Ingredients
For the dough (you can of course also shorten with ready-made yeast dough)
- 500 g Flour
- 7 g Dry yeast
- 80 ml Olive oil
- 50 ml Milk
- 260 ml Water lukewarm
- 1,5 TSP Salt
- 1 TSP Sugar
Zubereitung
Yeast dough
- Dissolve the sugar in lukewarm water, add the dry yeast and leave to stand for approx. 10 minutes.
- Then knead a dough with all the dough ingredients. You should knead the dough for a good 20 minutes.
- Place the dough in a large bowl, cover and leave to rise at room temperature for approx. 90 minutes.
Za'atar mass
- Peel and finely dice the onion.
- Mix the zatar, onions, salt and olive oil to a paste.
Za'atar snails
- Preheat the oven to 225 °C convection oven.
- Dust the work surface with a little flour and place the dough on it.
- Divide the dough into quarters and knead again carefully, adding a little flour if necessary, and set aside.
- Roll out the four pieces of dough one after the other into thin squares and spread the zatar mixture on top. It is important to leave an approx. 3 cm wide border.
- Roll up the dough surface into a roll and carefully cut off approx. 3 cm wide slices with a sharp knife.
- Lay out the slices with the cut surface on a baking tray lined with baking paper (caution: leave enough space between the slices).
- Bake the za'atar buns in a hot oven for approx. 12 minutes.