Baking up a ‘blessing’ in Tehran

TEHRAN: They bake what Iranians call “the barakat (blessing) of the table”, and it is eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner – traditional breads are a staple of the Iranian diet. Bakeries are easy to locate in urban centers of Iran where all one has to do is spot a queue spilling onto sidewalks or simply detect the irresistible scent of freshly baked flatbreads.

Exclusively the job of men in the Islamic republic, bakers get up well before the crack of dawn while everyone else is still asleep. Dressed in all-white clothing that can include caps, they hail from across the country and are usually made up of ethnic Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. The walls around them are a patchwork of flatbreads in four different shapes and sizes – barbari, lavash, sangak and taftoon. —AFP (See Page 15)

— AFP TEHRAN: This combination of pictures created on June 24, 2020 shows Iranian bakers in the capital (from left) Mohammad Abdi posing with lavash bread; Mohammad Mirzakhani posing with taftoon bread; Ali posing with sangak bread; Esmail Asghari posing with barbari bread; and Hasan posing with fantezi bread.