InternationalGive us this day our daily bread
Published: Saturday March 03, 2007 in Armenia at work
Zoya Mouradian bakes lavash with a smile: “What a smile shines on her face when her work is appreciated.”. Armen Hakobyan / Armenian Reporter.
Yerevan - The smell of lavash rises like a prayer from the mouth of the clay tonir. Earth, fire, and water tell their ancient tale. The tale of bread. Little bubbles swell on the thin layer of dough clinging to the hot wall of the tonir. One. Two. They don't escape Zoya's expert gaze. The bread is done. A second later, the piping hot sheet of lavash is lying on top of the others, adding to the appetizing aroma that seems to have permeated even the stones of the bakery.
Armanoush, Zoya's sister, has already used a rolling pin to flatten the next ball of dough. She hands the round layer of dough to her sister. Zoya takes it and plays with it like a juggler. One. Two. Three. Four. A miracle passed on from generation to generation. And the dough is a thin layer exactly the size of the board it will cover. With a practiced hand, Zoya drops it on the board and sprinkles some water on it.
"The tonir is still too hot. I sprinkle the water so the lavash doesn't stick to the wall of the tonir," smiles Zoya, and in one deft motion attaches the future sheet of lavash to the wall.
You feel like you're part of an ancient, mysterious ritual. There is a primeval, pagan, divine inspiration in all this. In Armenia, one of first places wheat was cultivated, lavash has always been baked. In the 5,000-year history of our national existence, there has been no change in the ingredients of lavash -flour, water, salt - nor in the way it is baked, nor in the simple joy of fresh-baked bread.
The ring of Zoya's cellular phone and the click of my camera suddenly dissipate the 5,000-year-old prayer and bring us back to the 21st century. "Yes, Mariam jan," Zoya takes the call. "She's already in the ninth grade. She does well at school," the proud mother says, adding that her daughter wants to study foreign languages in university. She sets the phone aside and quips, "I have become a remote-control mom."
She picks up another round of dough and the prayer is back: "Give us this day our daily bread."
Naghash's lavash
Zoya and Armanoush Mouradian are sisters. Baking lavash is not their hobby, but their livelihood. Seven days a week, without respite. They earn their living by the sweat of their brow. Literally, for the bakery is always hot. In the summer it is as hot as a foundry. You could melt.
The sisters work at the Naghash Bakery in Yerevan, which is a typical model of a small and medium enterprise (SME) in modern-day Armenia.
Satenik Ghochikjan, or just plain Mrs. Satenik, who is the sisters' indispensible assistant, tells us that the bakery was named Naghash after an Armenian cartoon character. The hero of this beautiful story travels the world but is never separated from the lavash his mother baked for him, with its magical powers.
"Sometimes the lavash splits down the middle, and Zoya picks it up, drapes it around her neck like the hero of the cartoon, and says ‘Look, it's Naghash's lavash!" Mrs. Satenik recounts, We start laughing. And in the clay tonir built by master Shahen, the fire starts laughing too. While we wait for the fire to "sit down," as Zoya says, Zoya, Armanoush, and Mrs. Satenik tell some of the little secrets of their big job.
"Everything here is done by hand, in the traditional way. Nothing is mechanized. We sift the flour by hand, we knead the dough by hand, we let it rise, Armanoush explains. There is a little secret here. For the bread to be good, you must remember God before making the dough. You must say, "Der Asdvadz oknagan," or "Lord God, help me." There's more. "I learned it from my mother. When the bread is kneaded, you have to make the sign of the cross on it, about a finger deep. And when you lift the cover later and see that the cross is no longer there, you know the dough is ready. It's time to make balls and start baking," Armanoush says.
She lives nearby and is the first to arrives at work. She prepares the flour, while Zoya comes over from the 16th District and the sisters get down to work, starting the fire.
Zoya walks to work, even though there's a convenient minibus route. She says she enjoys walking, Considering how many hours she must sit at work and the strenuous nature of her work, walking is even a necessity for her.
"Making bread, especially lavash, is collective work," Mrs. Satenik tells us. "But it's basically Zoya who does the baking. And baking is hard work. Your head is constantly in the mouth of the tonir. We send Zoya into the first line of fire and she gives us bread," she adds happily.
"Who was your teacher in baking lavash," I ask Zoya.
"I learned baking bread from my mother, Heghnar," she says. "In all the villages and in our Saralanj (in the Kotayk region), everyone used to bake. They still bake, but not everyone. As girls in the house, we learned to bake bread. We would roll, my mother would bake, and that's how we learned. Later, I would do it all on my own. Now, when we go to the village, we always take some of the bread we have baked. She blesses it and says that our handmade bread is the best thing.
After I got married, we to moved to Biurakan, and I used to bake for my family. I started doing it for a living here three years ago.
Good bakers are in demand like good football players
The details that emerge in our uninhibited, happy conversation, much like flour mixed with water, congeal and reveal an interesting picture. It turns out that Zoya and Armanoush are not the only heirs to their mothers baking secrets. "We are 5 sisters and 2 brothers," Zoya says. "My eldest sister, Alvard, used to work here. We were all together. But they grabbed her from us, much like they take away good football players. She was invited to another bakery and now she works in Jrvej. My other sister, Silva, is in Moscow. She also bakes lavash, but with an electric machine. She's set up shop on her own."
