Lahmajun

I’m Armenian, which means I’ve been eating lahmajun (“lah-mah-joon”) my whole life. My aunties would make it for us when we’d visit, rolling the yeasted dough into paper-thin rounds, spreading the rounds with a film of spiced ground lamb, and baking them until they were crispy and browned. And my mother often brought home boxes of the flatbreads from local Armenian bakeries, keeping them stacked face-to-face between sheets of parchment paper until it was time to reheat them. We’d spray the flatbreads with lemon juice and eat them like pizza (lahmajun predates—and is sometimes considered a precursor to—pizza; see “The Original Pizza?”) or turn them into sandwiches by rolling them around a salad of fresh or pickled vegetables.

My love for the dish had always been more than just habitual, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I ate lahmajun so good that it upped my standards for the dish as both an Armenian and a baker. Cooked in a blazing wood-fired oven, the bread had a delicate and crispy paper-thin crust, yet it was still tender within. And the lamb paste—fragrant with garlic and onion; red pepper; tomato; parsley; and earthy, warm spices—tasted rich and vibrant. Part of the difference was the hearth, which made for exceptional browning and rusticity. But the crumb of these flatbreads boasted more flavor and textural contrast between the exterior and