Recently, over in the Pastry & Baking forum, @Hassouni asked a question about the best flour to use to make a traditional Lebanese bread. I have no experience with the breads he asked about but I want to thank him for starting the thread. Like many eGullet topics, it led me to want to learn more about something I knew absolutely nothing about. First, I watched a number of Anthony Rahayel videos like the one he linked to (الترويقة اللبنانية الشهية : مناقيش عالصاج) and this one, MANOUSHE: Lebanese World Renowned Traditional Breakfast.
Of course I couldn't understand them and a search took me to this cookbook, Man'oushé, Inside the Lebanese Street Corner Bakery by Barbara Abdeni Massaad. It's not new, I think it was originally published in 2009. The author also wrote Mouneh: Preserving Foods for the Lebanese Pantry and Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate our Shared Humanity. I haven't tried to cook from this book so I can't speak to how well the recipes work, but I feel like I've spent time visiting many towns in Lebanon, meeting the people and learning about the breads as the author did for this project. The soft-bound version was $16 when I ordered it, which I thought was very fair for this large, photo-filled book. I generally hate it when people review a cookbook without cooking from it but I think this is a lovely book and I wanted to mention it here in case anyone else is interested. Instructions are provided for both traditional methods and a conventional oven or stove-top skillets so I should be able to try some of them. I'll come back and update this when I do.
Sadly, there's no look-inside feature for this book on Amazon, so I'm sharing a couple of photos to give you an idea of the book.
I most likely will NOT choose as my first recipe from the book this paper-thin bread that's stretched on a cushion and baked on a convex saj.
Something like these flat breads may be more within my reach:
