Lavash - a Love Story

a salute to the paper-thin bread that Armenians have perfected

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Having grown up with sliced bread, factory made and hermetically sealed in plastic bags, I remember the joy of first eating puffy naan bread and warm chapatis in India as a young backpacker well over 20 years ago. I knew these breads from restaurants back home in the UK but freshly made and eaten in-situ, they were entirely, and enticingly, different. Unable to get enough, I’d triple-carb most meals - potato curry, basmati rice, and a side of bread glorious bread.

Another revelation came later, in 2009, when I got to Uzbekistan.

Wandering through Samarkand’s Siyob Bazaar, I browsed breads that stirred both curiosity and appetite. Whole lanes of the market were given over to hefty, dinner plate-sized non bread with fat squidgy bagel-like edges and thin crispy compressed centres dotted with tiny black onion seeds, each giant disc heavy as a weapon and gloriously glazed.

Some sellers had artfully engraved their mobile phone numbers in the centre for easy reordering while others had decorated their breads with bright pink and green food dyes for celebrations.

I ate hungrily with my eyes first, anticipating the taste, whilst feeling slightly thunderstruck that until now I had lived without the knowledge that such beautiful and otherworldly breads existed.

(L) Mustahkam, one of Samarkand's star bakers (R) non bread for sale in Tashkent

For less than a dollar, I’d pay for one, rip it up and stuff bready wedges into my crumb-filled pockets for insurance against hunger on forthcoming journeys. Layered patyr bread was different again, calorific, utterly moreish and a meal in itself, rich with butter.

In Uzbekistan I was constantly introduced to bakers who, generally modest as is the Uzbek way, sincerely believed their bread could not be beaten. And, with mouth and heart full, it was impossible to disagree.

Then, not long after, I went to the South Caucasus where yet another bread world opened up like the wide hungry mouth of a tandoor, though the name and spelling of the clay oven changed with the miles, becoming a tonir in Armenia, a tandir in Azerbaijan and a tone in Georgia…

This newsletter isn’t to suggest rivalry, or a contest of breads, I wouldn’t dare, and couldn’t choose anyway. But I could, if I wanted to, trace my travelling life, I think, through ‘breads across borders’ though that would require a far longer read.

For now, onwards to the South Caucasus. First, briefly to Georgia, then to Armenia which is the ultimate focus of this newsletter.

Bakery in Tbilisi © Caroline Eden

One winter, when I was staying in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, I’d often end up on Mikheil Tsinamdzgvrishvili Street (pronunciation points gained - zero) waiting patiently outside a small bakery, with the smell of bread warmly circling all about me, a form of exquisite torture for the hungry and shivery. When my Georgian shoti bread was handed to me it would come wrapped in a simple piece of paper, the bundle hot enough to burn fingers.

I’d carry my bread - soft and fat in the middle and with thinner crispier handles at either end - whilst nibbling on a heel of it as I went along. It was hard not to.

But if I think of bread in the South Caucasus I mostly think of Armenia and lavash. Slightly smoky tasting and pockmarked all over, it is ubiquitous and a symbol of the country. I found it fiercely addictive.

Here is a video I took of lavash being made at volume, inside the wildly popular Gntunik Bakery (an hour north of the capital Yerevan), where I had lunch one afternoon:

Blistered and thin as can be, lavash goes exceptionally well with almost anything: salads and dips, grilled meats and fish, soups and stews, and because it is light it is particularly welcome during Armenia’s intense summer heat. Sometimes, as in the video, the sheets are so large that when the temperature drops in winter you may dream of bundling yourself up in a giant wrap of lavash and falling asleep in a warm blanket made of bread.

Lavash does have fantastical and mystical beliefs attached to it which encourage such daydreaming. In old Armenian lore it was sometimes said that angels would fly around the tonir as bread was being baked, cursing anyone who dared offend the bakers.

I remember, very clearly, when I first tasted lavash in downtown Yerevan, at a popular restaurant named after the bread itself.

Seated inside, I watched Armenian bakers roll out huge ovals of thin dough, slap them against the wall of a traditional tonir, and after just a minute, pull out the bread. My share of lavash on that particular morning was served with a cheese omelet brightened by blades of licorice-like tarragon.

Armenian lavash was listed as a culinary practice on UNESCO’s ‘List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’ a decade ago as an “expression of culture” and if you watch it being made that cannot be denied.

More about Armenian gastronomy can be found in Sonia Uvezian’s trailblazing The Cuisine Of Armenia (1974) or Alice Bezjian’s The Complete Armenian Cookbook (1983) and much more recently, in Lavash (2019), a cookbook dedicated to the country’s culinary culture by Kate Leahy, John Lee and Ara Zada. As the title suggests, bread forms the basis of many interesting recipes proposed and it is a treasured book in my collection. Do also have a read of this piece about lavash by Kate Leahy, here.

Next, I’d like us to travel to the tiny village of Tsaghkunk, and the restaurant of the same name, close to Armenia’s Lake Sevan.

That is where I met, by chance, Artak Zargaryan who once worked locally as a village school teacher. Today, he has helped develop this remarkable restaurant as part of The Cradle, an NGO aiming to restore ancient Armenian sites. 

Beside the restaurant is a stone-built dwelling with grass sprouting from its roof, a little like a Hobbit house. A few years ago, excavations here uncovered this small 18th-century home complete with two original tonir ovens, now kept behind glass for protection. There is a reverence to the dark and quiet space, a sense of purity and devotion even. 

Photo courtesy of Tsaghkunk

“Making lavash is a form of worship, a spiritual experience not just for food,” said Artak Zargaryan as he led the way inside. “When women baked here, so many years ago, they would have also been praying. Now we bake here for our guests. They can come and see this place, to sit in silence and feel the history.” 

The restaurant is not that easy to reach (you need a car) but it offered an exceptional dining experience. Lavash aside, there was pink trout from the lake; ponchiks, similar to doughnuts, filled with foraged mountain herbs and matsun (yoghurt); crispy fried chechil cheese with buttermilk and exceptional local wines. It is worth a trip to Armenia alone.

For our recipe this week, I’d like to point you in the direction of writer and baking specialist Andrew Janjigian who has written beautifully, and in depth, about lavash. Via this link Andrew talks us through his lavash recipe - it’s the gold standard and there’s no way I could better it. Give it a go.

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Thank you for reading. I will return on Monday with View Finder, an additional offering for paid subscribers where I feature a single photograph from somewhere between Eastern Europe and Central Asia and explain why it matters.