Levantine Breads

Specialised

⚠ SEVERAL BREADS, SEVERAL OVENS, AND THE OVEN IS THE DIFFERENCE. KHUBZ ARABI / pita — thin, two-layered and pocketed, baked fast in a very hot oven, and the everyday bread of the whole region. MARKOOK or SHRAK — paper-thin, stretched over a domed convex griddle called a SAJ, a Bedouin and village bread and the one mansaf is served on. TABOON bread — baked on the hot pebbles of a taboon oven, which is where its dimpled surface comes from, and the base of Palestinian musakhan. KA’AK, ring breads with sesame or mahlab. MANAQISH, the flatbread baked with za’atar, cheese or minced meat, which is breakfast. TANNOUR bread in the Jazira and Iraq. ⚠ AND BREAD IS A POLITICAL FACT HERE: subsidised bread is a documented instrument of state in both Syria and Egypt, and its price and supply are recorded as part of the foodway rather than as economics happening elsewhere.