Salamiyah Eid Ka’ak (aqras al-eid)

Salamiyah’s Eid ka’ak is a patterned, disc-shaped pastry made from flour, ghee, sugar and yeast. Its smell comes from what locals call Eid spice: anise, fennel, mahlab and nigella seed. It is made only for the two Eids, above all Eid al-Fitr, and in the days before the holiday the smell fills the town’s streets.

How the dough is made

The list is short: flour, ghee, sugar, yeast and spice, with sesame in some houses. The dough is kneaded by hand or machine and rolled out with a rolling pin. In a step called takris, circles are cut with a cutter or by hand. A hand tool called a mankash then presses a pattern on top, and the ka’ak goes into the oven. There are plain, almond, date, and almond-and-date versions. The sources give no quantities or baking times; proportions vary from house to house.

Before Eid: home dough to the neighbourhood oven

Preparation starts in the last week of Ramadan. Women gather in one house and knead together through the night; some households make up to 50 kilograms. The custom of preparing dough at home and carrying it to the neighbourhood oven lives on in Salamiyah. The town also has family bakeries thirty-five years old, and women who take orders before Eid.

The same preparation comes before Eid al-Adha. In 2025 al-Watan reported on families in Salamiyah who prefer making ka’ak at home and on neighbours helping one another. If a guest is not offered ka’ak, something about the holiday feels missing.

The same pastry in Homs and rural Hama

In Homs the same pastry is made in every house for Eid under the name aqras al-eid, Eid discs. The Homs recipe uses flour, ghee, yeast, mahlab and fennel. The dough is rolled in the last week of Ramadan, cut into circles and patterned, and taken out of the oven when it turns the yellow of a wasp’s wing. Bakeries in Bab al-Sibaa bake the dough that households bring. In rural western Hama it is made for Eid al-Adha, with nutmeg and cardamom added to the spice.

Not murashsham, not ka’ak rings, not maamoul

The Hauran’s murashsham bread shares the Arabic name aqras al-eid and also carries anise and mahlab, but it is stamped by pressing it into a carved wooden mould. Salamiyah’s ka’ak has no mould: circles are cut, the pattern is worked with a hand tool, and the result is closer to a biscuit than to bread. The ka’ak on this site’s street food page is an everyday sesame bread ring. Nor is it a sweet built around a filling like maamoul; here the spiced dough carries the flavour.