Assaad El Khoury and his wife, from Chadra-Akkar have recently opened a new bakery in Byblos, a tiny kiosk selling one of the best traditional Lebanese bread: Tannour.
Assaad is an entrepreneur who turned the love of his grandmother’s bread into a thriving business as an attempt to revive the Lebanese heritage.
Opening all week long from 8 am till 5 pm, this family business serves beside the traditional bread and talamé ( a bread which is very soft in the middle and flakey on the outside) classical man’ouche, fatayer chanklich, kawarma b labneh and even pizza!
All the products are homemade and prepared with love and attention by Assad’s wife.
A Tannour is an oven made from a special kind of clay or mud that retains heat and usually its fired by wood.
The baking of Tannour bread has something very special; after the classical routine of putting the loaf on a round cotton pillow , the bread its tossed onto the hot clay wall inside the Tannour, and amazingly the dough sticks to the wall!
It takes no more than a couple of minutes to have a finished loaf, which is removed with great speed before the bread burns.
Travel stories from Lebanon 