If using yogurt and milk, start at least 3 hours and up to a day in advance by
placing both in a bowl. Whisk well and leave in a cool place or in the fridge
until bubbles form on the surface. What you get is a kind of homemade buttermilk, but less sour.
Tear the bread into bite-size pieces and place in a large mixing bowl. Add
your fermented yogurt mixture or commercial buttermilk, followed by the rest
of the ingredients, mix well, and leave for 10 minutes for all the flavors to
combine.
Spoon the fattoush into serving bowls, drizzle with some olive oil, and garnish generously with sumac.
How to make toum, the powerful Lebanese garlic condiment, at home in your food processor, and what to do if it breaks. Whenever my husband and I order delivery from our favorite Lebanese place, the center of the meal isn’t the chicken shawarma or the mixed grill for two—it’s the potent garlic sauce, toum. Despite my desperate messages for extra toum, they never pack more than three two-ounce containers of the stuff. I carefully ration the precious substance, but my husband mindlessly finishes his tub and a half and descends onto my share, leaving me forced to recalibrate each of my smears and paw hysterically at empty containers.
