Barbari, and an oven I will never own

29 November 2025bakingrecipevideo

Barbari is a long, flat Iranian bread with deep grooves along its length and a shiny, golden top. I have eaten it exactly once. The video below is twelve minutes filmed inside a bakery that makes it all day, posted to Wikimedia Commons by Street Food Tourists. I was not there and did not film it. I have watched it about five times.

What to look for. In the first couple of minutes the dough is portioned and left on a long bench, and it is very soft. Around four minutes in, a baker stretches each piece into a long oval, then runs his fingers down its length to make the grooves. Then comes a wipe of glaze, sesame on top, and the whole thing goes on a long padded peel into an oven roughly the size of my kitchen. They come out in a few minutes. Nobody hurries and nobody stops.

The glaze is called roomal: a little flour and bicarbonate of soda cooked in water until it thickens. The bicarbonate is why the crust browns so deeply and tastes faintly of pretzel.

My version

Roomal: 5 g flour, 2 g bicarbonate of soda, 100 g water, simmered for a minute until it looks like thin wallpaper paste. Sesame and nigella seeds for the top.

1. Mix everything except the salt, rest 20 minutes, add the salt and squeeze it through.
2. Three sets of stretch-and-folds over an hour and a half. Bulk until roughly doubled, about two hours at 21 °C.
3. Divide in two. Pre-shape into loose rectangles, rest 20 minutes.
4. Heat the oven to 250 °C with a heavy tray inside, for at least 40 minutes.
5. On baking paper, press each piece into an oval about 35 cm long. Brush with roomal, then press five deep grooves lengthways with four fingers, going nearly to the paper.
6. Seeds on, slide paper and bread onto the hot tray, bake 13 to 15 minutes until deep gold.

First attempt: the grooves vanished in the oven because I had not pressed hard enough. You need to press until it feels like you are about to tear it. Second attempt: grooves held, crust browned beautifully, and the bread was good. Not barbari, though. Theirs is a metre long and baked in a few minutes at a heat my oven only dreams about, which gives a blistered crust and a soft inside. Mine is thirty-five centimetres long and a bit more like a focaccia that has been to a good school.

I will keep the roomal. It does something to a crust I have not managed any other way.