At Abou Sajjad, owner of a bakery in the historic center of Baghdad since 2005, we take out a batch every 45 seconds.

Sajjad, his son, says he sells 10,000 samouns "on a normal day. But on Fridays (weekly rest day in Iraq, editor's note) we can go up to 12,000".

Normal, in Iraq the samoun is everywhere and on all the tables.

All villages, even the most remote, have at least one bakery.

And the samoun is devilishly simple to prepare.

Sajjad mixes a 50 kg bag of flour with yeast and water, then he lets the kneading machine massage the dough for 10 minutes.

A few minutes of rest and in a jiffy the baker transforms a ball of 90 to 100 grams into a diamond ready to be baked in the brick oven.

A crusty bread on the outside comes out, steaming on the inside.

In the bakery, there is always excitement.

Al-Rashid Street, where 19th century houses are dangerously crumbling for lack of repairs, is dotted with restaurants that are also Abu Sajjad's main customers.

-"We like it hot"-

The samoun can accompany a dish of rice and chicken in sauce, a "qouzi" (mutton with rice) or a "pacha" (a boiled sheep's head).

Iraqis also like to open it in half and slip in their falafel with vegetables to eat on the go.

An employee of a bakery in Baghdad on January 23, 2023 prepares "samoun", a diamond-shaped bread, which is to the Iraqi table what the baguette is to France © Sabah ARAR / AFP

The samoun is also within reach of all budgets.

"I sell 8 samouns for 1,000 dinars", barely a euro, explains Abou Sajjad.

Recently, the price of flour imported from Turkey has increased, "but I did not pass on the increase. Instead, I lowered the weight of each samoun from 120 to 100 grams".

But where does this characteristic shape come from?

Sajjad gets a bit lost: "Egyptian bread has a different shape and you French people have the baguette".

In her cookbook and history of Iraqi cuisine "Delights from the Garden of Eden", author Nawal Nasrallah explains that the name "samoun" comes from the Turkish word "+ somoun + whose origin is the Greek word + psomos +, a generic term for bread".

The diamond shape would have "been adopted by Iraqi bakers at the beginning of the 20th century", according to her.

Meanwhile, the lunch break is fast approaching at Abou Sajjad's and Karim, a regular at the bakery, comes to stock up on samouns.

"We Iraqis love samoun. We were born with it, we're used to it and we like it hot," he said laconically, nibbling on a hot chunk of bread.

And he's right: the samoun tastes better when it comes out of the oven.

After only a few hours, the bread dries out, stiffens and loses all its crispiness.

© 2023 AFP