The next variety is mostly baked by the smaller bakers of the various suburbs of the towns, who have a slower sale. Your Persian likes his bread hot from the oven, save the thrifty Ispahani, who prefers it cold, thus gaining in the weight. This is the “tannūr” bread. The “tannūr,” or oven, is simply a huge jar fixed into the earth, and usually placed against a wall. This is constantly fed with pieces of camel-thorn, which catch from the flames at the bottom, and keep the walls of the jar hot, as well as maintaining a high temperature inside. The loaf is the same thickness as the “sangak,” and about two feet by one, oval in shape. They are flung against the inside of the heated jar by a peculiar motion of the hand of the “shartir,” or baker’s oven-man. In a few seconds they are thoroughly done and browned. They are then quickly removed by a fork, and others placed in their stead.
The third kind of bread is that usually baked by villagers or tribesmen. It is a thick circular loaf, some foot or more in diameter, and is a sort of griddle-cake.
It is baked on a hot plate of iron, or at times a pot-lid covered with live ashes is placed over it, or the cake is turned over.
The unleavened bread, which is best prepared by Armenians and Kūrds, is merely a paste of flour and water, rolled to the thinness of a wafer, and of great size. It is baked on a hot plate, and is hung out to air and dry; it is then folded, when not quite dry, into four. It will keep for several months if kept dry, and is damped prior to using, when it loses its brittleness, and becomes easily rent, but unbreakable. It is a capital bread for the road, and is invariably carried by Persians when marching, being very portable, and as palatable after a couple of months as on the day it was made.
Rusks, biscuits, and a peculiar form of very dry bread, called “twice-fired,” are specially made for travellers; and the Armenians prepare a kind of bun, which is made with flour and ghee, slightly sweetened and sprinkled with sesamum seeds. Sesamum and poppy seeds are often used to ornament and flavour the breads, especially the “tannūr” variety. Hard-boiled eggs are also sold, dyed red or yellow, for the use of travellers. A lump of cheese, a few raisins, and a dozen of eggs are, with some of the “twice-fired” bread, a sufficient and cheap provision for the native traveller.
The appetite of some of the lower orders for bread is very extraordinary. I have often been surprised to have a servant ask for an increase of wages, because he had a large appetite. Persians invariably pay their servants so much in cash, so much (by weight) of bread, two suits a year, and what is left at meals divided among them. This the European does not do; he gives it all in coin. I have seen a boy eat fourteen pounds of new bread and, as a sauce to the bread, a dozen hard-boiled eggs. I saw this, and I left him—still eating.
Bread, eggs, “mast” (curds), and cheese form the staple food of the labouring classes in Persia; occasional onions, eaten in chunks as a boy eats an apple with us, render the menu tasty, and the eater insupportable.
Meat the poor seldom eat. When they do get it, they make soup of it, pounding up the meat after it is boiled to rags, and mixing it anew with the soup; they dip bits of bread in the mess till it is consumed. Of course, in the fruit, lettuce, cucumber, grape, and melon seasons, these form a large portion of their diet.