Talk:Laffa

This post would benefit from an additional section, which I have added, on the culinary uses of laffa as a sandwich wrapper or a bread for dipping. This would be consistent with other pages on bread, including pita bread.Oliverzhang29 (talk) 14:00, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I think this article could dive deeper into the history of laffa, specifically its relation to Israeli-Palestinian history and cultural clashes.Oliverzhang29 (talk) 19:52, 6 February 2022 (UTC) Other potential sources

https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/hummus-and-laffa-bread/Laffa bread is thicker and chewier than regular pita, and is especially good at holding meat dishes, in particular kebabs and shwarma.

https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2020/06/22/discovering-tear-and-scoop-laffa-bread#:~:text=Around%20the%20world%2C%20laffa%20is,the%20two%20staple%20street%20foods. Long and slow fermentation process, traditionally dairy-free and vegan, also known as "Iraqi pita"Oliverzhang29 (talk) 20:10, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Merge into Taboon bread

Surely this should merge into the Taboon bread page given that the Hebrew version of that page (https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%94) is titled Laffa and these are clearly the same thing. Yakkity0 (talk) 18:56, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Origin too specific: only known to Iraqi Jews?

Perhaps would be good to call it Levantine food? Laffa is eaten more frequently than Pita in Syria — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:3EB2:A200:C010:AA92:70A1:CB79 (talk) 22:14, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

"...in Israeli cuisine, of Iraqi origin...": isn't it still, and maybe primarily, an Iraqi bread? Or as I can see from the comment here-above (Syria!): a bread eaten all across the Levant? I can only think of one scenario which would allow the current definition to be correct: that Iraqi (AND Syrian?) Jews had their own tradition and vocabulary, which disappeared from those Arab countries with their complete emigration after 1948. I don't think that's a very plausible scenario at all. It more likely is a case of an Israeli version of that story about the tadpole who only knew the world from what it saw from the bottom of its puddle, and thought people have the shape of a foot. Thanks, Arminden (talk) 16:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

The conversation seems to have moved one section down. Pls post there. Arminden (talk) 11:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Khubz tannour/taboon & specific to Iraqi Jews/Israel or not

I have reverted these edits: [1] by Reinhearted. The Spruce Eats recipe page is not a reliable source for the claim that "laffa" bread is a widespread food item outside of Israel, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#dotdash.

Bread cooked in a tandoor, in Arabic khubz tannour or khubz taboon, is indeed eaten all over the Arab world. The author of the Spruce Eats article is a dietician who describes her expertise as "kosher cooking", and it's not suprising that she might refer to it by the Israeli term "laffa". However, it is simply incorrect to refer to Middle Eastern khubz tannour in general as laffa, which is exclusively an Israeli term; I have seen no evidence that it is used as an alternate name of khubz tannour in Arabic, but only as the name of sandwich wraps made from it. This article is essentially about tandoor bread in Israel. Please don't try to change the subject to be about tandoor bread in all of the Middle East.

You may be looking for taboon bread or tandoor bread#West Asia. There is also a small amount of content at khubz, which is currently under discussion. Unfortunately, they are sadly lacking in content compared to this article. I'm working on expanding it. If you would like to do something useful, you could help add to those articles.

If you feel that the content of this article should be moved into a more general article about tandoor bread in the Middle East, and this article deleted, you may make a merge proposal. There are one or two people who have suggested that above. --IamNotU (talk) 03:09, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I don’t know why this dish should only be exclusive to Israeli cuisine, multiple other sources state that it is found in countries all over the Levant and Iraq. I did not change the material, I simply reinstated it to include that the dish is also very popular in Israel. Reinhearted (talk) 12:05, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Please indent your replies, thanks. It depends what you mean by "this dish". You won't find a bread named "laffa" outside of Israel. You are correct that the bread itself, the ingredients and method of cooking, are basically the same as the khubz tannour found in those countries, and that is noted already in the last sentence of the lead paragraph. The fact that laffa has its origin in Iraq is also noted (see [2]) in the infobox. But it's improper and misleading to place those breads under the name "laffa" unless you're speaking Hebrew. It's not an English word for tandoor bread, unlike "pita" is for Middle Eastern pocket flatbread for example. You won't find it in English dictionaries. It's exclusively an Israeli term for the bread brought by Iraqi Jews and popularized in Israel, though as noted, Israelis may also use the name for other breads like Druze bread, markook shrek, or the local Palestinian taboon bread, though Palestinians just call it khubz. People in the Jewish diaspora may refer to tandoor bread in other Arab countries by the Israeli term, but it's inaccurate for English Wikipedia to describe all these breads as "laffa", or to imply that Middle Easterners outside of Israel eat a type of bread they call "laffa". As I said, this article is basically about "tandoor bread in Israeli culture". There could be equally important articles about "tandoor bread in Syria" or "tandoor bread in Iraq", but this is not those. Personally, I'm not a fan of splitting things up by country like that. I would rather see a larger article about "tandoor bread in the Middle East and North Africa" for example. But that's not currently the way things are set up. The best we have for the moment are the articles I linked to above, which need work. --IamNotU (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@IamNotU: hi. I see, yours seems to be the answer to the main question here. Except: nobody seems to claim that "laffa" would be a Hebrew word. Is it a word originally strictly used by Iraqi Jews? Jewish Arabic dialects and registers are nothing new, but is this a fact? This is the missing piece. If, on the contrary, the word is a more widely used Iraqi Arabic term, or maybe even used in Syria as well (see comment in the section one up), your reply becomes nothing more than your very personal subjective comment. We need facts, so RS (reliable sources). Until then, I'm afraid that your guess (and comment) is as good as the next person's. Right? Arminden (talk) 10:47, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Useful: Rajki's dictionary has "laffa : wrap [?]" (Rajki, András (2005). Arabic Dictionary with etymologies). Google Translate offers لف, "lafa", as a 2nd option for 'wrap'. So do Iraqi and maybe other Levantine Arabs use this term for wrap when referring to a large and thin khubz tannour/taboon? If not, it's strictly Iraqi Jewish & Israeli. If yes, the article must be rewritten in that sense.

Apart from that: combining local terms for the same Levantine bread type into one common article makes perfect sense to me. A common intro, and then each one with its own section. Separating like this seems, sorry to say, like small-minded campanilismo ("our campanile is taller than yours", and implicitly the view that the world worth acknowledging is only as large as one can go and still see one's hometown's belltower). Arminden (talk) 17:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

What constitutes membership in the the "See Also" section? Seems pretty arbitrary...Crowdsoreced (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Can't it be cooked on a saj?

So not baked in an oven, but cooked outdoors on a simple convex metal griddle (saj). Arminden (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Food in the Islamic Middle East

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2023 and 24 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Crowdsoreced (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Egguser44 (talk) 22:56, 19 March 2023 (UTC)