Palestinian Taboon Bread in a Small Bakery in Amman
Words & Photos by Hisham Assaad
I named my second book “Taboon” in honor of the most basic device people from the region use to make bread. Similar to the Lebanese tannour made from clay, stone, or nowadays concrete, the taboon, which comes in differing shapes, is heated for several hours and bread is carefully distributed in it to be baked to one’s liking. We’ve seen it built from mud and straw and dried in the sun in videos shared from Gaza over the past months. Despite Israeli attempts to claim and appropriate it, taboon remains a symbol of Palestinian heritage.
I’m originally Palestinian myself: my family spent its days seeking shelter after being expelled by the Israeli occupation. It still fascinates me how the food that’s been made across our region for centuries is being claimed by a state younger than my grandmother. While we struggled to feed hungry mouths to survive, this very entity fed our food to the world and called it theirs, publishing books on “How to Cook in Palestine.”
There was no urgency to document these recipes before, as there was no threat of theft and appropriation. Everyone sort of learned them from family members or neighbors, and that went on for generations. My mother filled old agendas-turned-recipe-books with dishes learned from friends and relatives. Other mothers saved clippings from magazines and recipe cards from commercial brands and kept them as prized collections. Sometimes that would be the only inheritance they could pass down. In 2013, I started archiving my version of these clippings on my website. Many of the recipes we grew up preparing at home in Lebanon were unknown outside the Palestinian community I lived in, so I worried that social, economic, and political circumstances would make a large part of them disappear. That also gave me the drive to publish a book and is why I urge people to document their stories and recipes, even though it could feel trivial while we try to endure what we’re enduring today.
Now back to taboon. I’ve tasted tannour bread many times in Lebanon, but had never come across its Palestinian equivalent until I went to Amman where I got a chance to witness taboon bread being made in a local bakery. Bread-making is a communal activity in our region – or at least it used to be. It was typically leavened with a piece of dough from a previous batch of dough, it was like sourdough before the term caused a frenzy in the food world. Today, taboon bread is made with commercial yeast, instant or baker's yeast. After kneading, resting and shaping, the dough balls are flattened by hand into disks which are then tossed into the oven or on top of the stones that line the bottom of the oven. Breadmakers, which were once the women of the family, would gather to make bread. Tasks are divided: one kneads, the other one shapes, and another tends to the oven. This gathering takes place every time one’s bread reserve gets stale or runs out.
While visiting Amman last April, my friend Firas took me to his favorite breakfast spot and brought a few freshly baked loaves of taboon bread along. It was thick and pillowy, with indentations and large bubbles on the surface. It was the perfect thing to scoop the tahini-heavy hummus with, creating a balanced le’mé (scoop or bite). Firas pointed me to the bakery and we went to visit it. Naturally, the old man in the shop greeted me with a look of intrigue when he saw an unrecognizable face with a camera dangling around the neck. I asked for permission to take photos so his face relaxed with approval. He pulled a fresh loaf out of the taboon oven, tore it into two, and gave me and my friend one half each. He was kind and generous throughout: answering every question and even giving me his recipe for msakhan, a dish that celebrates olive oil and gives new life to stale bread by soaking it in the oil and baking it with sumac, onions, and chicken. I came back to Lebanon with a bag full of bread, loads of photos to share, and my curiosity satisfied.
Making Taboon Bread
To make 6 flatbreads:
200g (12⁄3 cups) of strong (bread) flour
150g (1 cup) of wholewheat (wholemeal) flour, plus extra for dusting (you can also use cornmeal for dusting)
2 tablespoons of fine burghul (optional)
1⁄2 a teaspoon of dried active yeast
1 teaspoon of salt
250ml (1 cup) of water
60ml (1⁄4 cup) of olive oil
You will also need:
Clean, dry river pebbles (each about the size of a ping-pong ball) and a sturdy oven tray or a pizza stone. Pebbles can be purchased at homewares stores – make sure they don’t have any kind of coating on them. Wash and dry them thoroughly before heating. Stones collected from nature should be used with caution as they may contain a small amount of moisture, which can cause them to crack or pop abruptly when heated.
How to make it:
Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the water and half of the olive oil, and mix until you get a shaggy dough. Knead it on the work surface for 5 minutes (or in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook). Use as little additional flour as possible when kneading.
Drizzle the remaining olive oil into the bowl and return the dough to the bowl. Cover and rest for 1 hour. You can also leave it overnight (8-10 hours) to slow ferment if the temperature is kept low (otherwise, place it in the refrigerator). Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and shape each one into a ball. Return to the bowl, cover, and rest for 10 minutes.
Arrange the clean and dry pebbles in a sturdy oven tray (or use a pizza stone) and place it at the bottom of the oven to preheat to 230°C (450°F/gas 8). On a cornmeal-dusted working surface, use a rolling pin to roll each ball out into a disc that’s 5mm (¼ in) thick. You can even flip it between your hands like pizza dough in a pizzeria. Throw it onto the hot pebbles or pizza stone and bake for 2–3 minutes. If the top hasn’t started to change colour, flip it and bake for another 1–2 minutes. Remove from the oven and wrap in a clean dish towel. Repeat to cook the rest of the dough. Allow the flatbreads to slightly cool down if you’re not eating them immediately, and store them in a plastic bag to preserve their moisture.