Lavosh cracker bread

In trying to answer what is lavosh or a lavosh cracker, we need to go to its origins. Lavosh (also spelled lavash, lawaash, lawasha) is a simple ancient thin, crunchy Middle Eastern style bread usually made with wheat flour, water and salt. The thickness of the bread varies depending on how thin it is rolled out.

What is a Lavosh Cracker

Dry crunchy lavosh made thin is delicious as a picnic snack or pre-dinner nibble. It it often flavored with sesame, oregano, Parmesan, fennel seeds, poppy seeds or chilly.

There are multiple versions of flat-breads baked throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East and India, such as  pita or naan, but lavash is considered the oldest.

This versatile  bread-in-various shapes and sizes, and in textures ranging from soft and pliable to crisp like a cracker, is a staple food throughout Armenia and in parts of Georgia, Iran, and Lebanon today.

Armenian lavash has been made in the same way for thousands of years: The nomadic peoples traveling back and forward across Asia knew a good thing and quickly adopted it and spread its use originally baked on a stone it soon became adapted to round clay ovens.

This ancient food staple was probably more widely introduced into Europe by the Ottomans.  Lavosh has many varieties and dry crunchy versions are now often used around the modern world as a snack food with cheeses, raw vegetables, or with dips. Flavored varieties are also great snack foods on their own. This bread was historically made in large batches as it could be stored for long period.

Lavosh is thought to have originated in Armenian, and is also known as Armenian cracker bread, cracker bread, or paraki. Lavosh is an unleavened flat bread that is soft like a tortilla when fresh out of the oven or hard like a cracker when its cooled off. Its often re-hydrated in certain styles.

Lavosh baked the Traditional Way.

Traditional Armenian bakers used a dexterous hand toss and a hay-filled cushion for stretching the dough and pushing it evenly on to the sides of a tandoor style, cylindrical clay or metal oven. See this YouTube video of traditional Lovosh bread baking in this restaurant, in Katnaghpur village, Armenia.

Historically The Armenians would bake lavosh breads in autumn, and store them for consumption throughout the winter. The lavash was dried, and stacked, then covered covered and stored away. The dried lavosh was later re-hydrated for consumption by sprinkling it with water and covered it with a cloth for an hour.

You can bake your own lavosh in the home by following this how-to bake lavosh video on YouTube.

If you don’t have time to bake, Buy our lavosh crackers in sesame seed or black Sesame with pepper flavors manufactured in Sydney Australia, in a modern HACCP certified food factory.