Khubz Arabi — Syrian Flatbread

This is what reaches the table in Syria most of the time: white flour, leavened, flat and round. Passing through the oven it swells at once in the high heat. It balloons, then falls as it comes out. A pocket is left between the two layers. That pocket is what sets the bread apart from everything else.

Why it is hollow

Moisture in the dough turns to steam in the heat and pushes the top surface away from the bottom. The loaf stands like a ball for a few seconds. When the heat drops it sinks. The two layers never rejoin. The result is a pocket that opens without a knife. The shawarma seller slits it along the edge and fills it with meat or falafel.

What it does at the table

It does the work of a fork. A piece is torn off, folded between two fingers into the shape of a spoon and used to lift hummus, mutabbal or beans off the plate. This is why bread arrives in a stack rather than in slices, and sits in the middle of the table. Yesterday’s bread is not thrown out: it is broken under a fatteh and fried into fattoush.

How it differs from markook and tannour bread

All three can appear at one table, and they are often confused. Markook is unleavened, single-layered and as thin as paper, cooked on a convex griddle. Tannour bread is wholewheat, thick and brown, pressed onto the inner wall of a clay oven. Khubz arabi is neither. It is leavened, made from white flour, two-layered, and baked on an oven belt. In English writing this is the bread called Syrian bread.

Buying it

Bakeries sell it in plastic-wrapped stacks. A warm stack stays soft in the hand well into the evening. It is also the subsidised loaf, the one Syrians call tayin. Its price and the queue outside the bakery are a permanent subject of daily conversation, and the first piece of economic reality a traveller meets. The price shifts often; ask at the counter.