If both sangak bread and lavash bread are served on the breakfast table, the first choice of most of us is sangak bread. This kind of bread for many years was put on the tablecloths of Iranians. Sangak bread is made in a worldwide unique triangular shaped oven and it itself is the oldest triangular shaped bread in the world. The first dictionary where the word “sangak” was mentioned is “Borhan-e Qate” dictionary compiled in 1651.
The author of the dictionary defined the word in such a way: “it is a kind of bread which is baked on hot pebbles.” Historical background of sangak bread is not very clear. It is only known that the word “sangak” is a diminutive, “sang” meaning stone and “sangak” meaning little stone, referring to the way in which sangak bread is baked. According to some legends, sangak bread was popular and baked long before the advent of Islam to Iran and its originator was a doctor of one of the Sassanid sultans.
He prescribed a sultan, who had a severe illness, to eat bread baked only on pebbles. There are as well other versions about the origin of sangak. There is a story in the Calendar of Tehran Bakers Committee, published on 10th of May in 1947 in Tehran, that describes the first emergence of sangak bread bakeries: “Shah Abbas I was looking for a solution on how to improve the wellbeing of the poorest classes of society and also of his troops that on their missions needed to have enough bread that was prepared quickly and easy and so every city they entered needed to establish a bakery capable of providing bread to all the troops according to their needs, and therefore he sought advice from Sheikh Baha’i, one of the greatest Iranian scholars of that time. Sheikh Baha’i after much thinking invented sangak bread oven.”
His invention was so accurate and precise that even after hundred of years sangak bread ovens are built according to that first design and the bread itself baked in such ovens is the most popular Iranian bread so far. If the told story is true, Sheikh Baha’i should be held the first inventor of sangak bread and its special form oven, although other researchers claim that the origin of the triangular bread dates back to the Sassanid era.
Name Sangak Bread
Other Name Dough Bread
Type of Dough Yeast Dough
Archaism Sassanian and or Safavid Era
Founder Sassanian Physicians and Sheikh Bahaie
Shape Triangle
Type of Oven Triangle-shaped with rocks
Oldest Source of Description Borhan Ghate
