What is
saj bread?
A paper-thin flatbread baked in under a minute on a hot metal dome. It is the reason a saj wrap folds around the meat instead of fighting it.
The bread and the dome
Saj is named after the thing it is baked on. The saj is a convex metal dome heated from below. Dough is stretched thin enough to see light through, thrown over the dome, and it cooks in well under a minute — blistered in spots, still soft and foldable everywhere else.
It is the everyday bread of the Levant: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine. In some places you will see it called markook or shrak. Same idea.
Saj versus pita
Pita is leavened and baked in an oven, so it puffs and splits into a pocket. Saj is barely leavened and cooked on a surface, so it stays flat and pliable.
- Pita holds filling in a pocket. Good, but the pocket tears when you overfill it and the bread-to-meat ratio is high.
- Saj rolls tight around the filling like paper. Less bread, more meat, and it does not go dry the way a thick pita does.
If you have had a really good shawarma somewhere and could not work out why it was better, the bread is often the answer.
What we wrap in saj
- Shawarma Chicken Saj — $10.49
- Shawarma Beef Saj — $11.49
Both are the same meat off the same spit as the pita sandwiches; only the bread changes. Fifty cents buys you a noticeably different sandwich. See the full shawarma menu and prices.
Eating it at its best
Saj is at its peak in the first ten minutes. It is thin, so it loses its flexibility as it cools faster than pita does. If you are taking it home, that is worth knowing — how to reheat shawarma covers what to do with a saj wrap that has gone cold, and it is not the microwave.