Samoon, the sandwich loaf

Samoon is a diamond or spindle-shaped loaf with a hard crust and an open crumb. It is baked on a stone oven floor, and live-culture yoghurt goes into the leavening. Most of what is eaten from a street counter in Syria arrives in this bread: shawarma, falafel, kebab. Saying which bread you want is really choosing what shape your sandwich will be.

How it differs from khubz arabi

The everyday bread of Syria is khubz arabi, the flat one with a pocket. Its dough is flour, water, yeast and salt, and nothing else. Samoon takes yoghurt into the dough and its leavening feeds on a live culture, and that gives a thicker crust, a more open crumb, and a loaf that is still worth eating the day after the flatbread has gone stiff. Khubz is folded. Samoon is cut.

Why it is the sandwich bread

A pocketed flatbread is wrapped, so it gives you a wrap. Samoon is split down one side and filled, so it gives you a sandwich. The difference is not only shape. Sauce and fat stay inside a loaf; they run out of the end of a wrap. Standing up with a shawarma in your hand that is a practical distinction, and the man at the counter settles it by asking you.

Where it came from

Samoon is one of the breads that entered the region from outside. Its name is believed to come from an Armenian word that itself traces back to the Greek word for bread. The diamond shape it carries today is thought to have been given to it by Iraqi bakers in the early 20th century. The name is shared between Syria and Iraq, and the bread is most strongly associated with Iraqi cooking. In Syria its place is exactly this one, the sandwich counter.

What you are asked at the counter

At a shawarma or falafel counter the question is short: khubz or samoon. The answer decides whether what you carry away is a wrap or a roll. Say samoon and the loaf is split and filled and the sandwich comes out heavier; say khubz and you get something thinner and quicker. The two are often not priced the same, so it is worth asking.