BEIRUT, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Over a crackling wood fire in the town of Rashaya in eastern Lebanon, Dalal Omar stretches a ball of dough between her hands until it is almost translucent, then drapes it over the hot, domed iron saj. Within moments, the sheet blisters and browns, and the bread is done.
The effortless-looking gesture carries a craft handed down through generations of Lebanese women, one that bakeries and packaged bread nearly pushed out of village kitchens.
Today, saj bread is making a comeback, finding new customers in shops and markets. But whether younger generations will learn the traditional skill of making it remains an open question.
In Lebanon's villages and towns, women once gathered to bake saj bread together, making enough to feed their families. The practice gradually faded as bakeries spread and ready-made bread filled shop shelves.
Omar, in her fifties, learned to make saj bread, known locally as "marqouq," as a child in her grandmother's kitchen, where the saj was heated over a wood fire. At first, she watched. Then her grandmother started asking her for help, and step by step, she learned the craft.
She still makes it the old way. The work requires time and patience, she told Xinhua, from preparing the dough and leaving it to rise to rolling each loaf paper-thin by hand and baking it. She turns out between 100 and 150 loaves a day, a process that takes about five hours.
For Omar, the bread represents more than food. It evokes memories of home, family and relatives gathered together. She believes the craft deserves to be passed on to younger generations rather than become a memory of the past.
Farouk Haddad, in his sixties, remembers when saj bread was part of everyday life. In his family home, his grandmother did the baking, often with help from his mother. As the smell of fresh bread spread through the house, neighbors and relatives gathered around the saj for a morning feast of labneh, olives, fried eggs, zaatar, and kishk.
Afterward, everyone pitched in to clean the kitchen, carry the bread to the pantry, and wash the dishes and dough bowls.
Those mornings were also where the skill was handed down, Haddad said, as women shared the work and exchanged baking tips while families caught up on the latest news.
As lifestyles changed and life became faster-paced, he told Xinhua, such gatherings gradually disappeared from many homes. The return of saj bread, he said, has revived some of those memories.
In recent years, saj bread has been finding its way back, moving from home kitchens into markets, shops and heritage festivals, where it is baked fresh in front of visitors drawn by its taste and connection to earlier times.
Its growing popularity, however, does not necessarily mean that the traditional skill of making it is being revived.
The craft has also moved beyond the family kitchen. Shadi al-Hajj, a vendor, runs a commercial kitchen where four workers bake every day on gas-fired saj, a far cry from the wood fires of village homes.
He delivers the bundles in a small pickup truck to shops in Rashaya al-Wadi and West Bekaa in eastern Lebanon and Hasbaya in the south. His sales have risen to 100 loaves a day, up from around 50 previously. Customers, he told Xinhua, come for its taste, freshness, and many uses in Lebanese cuisine.
At heritage festivals, baking the bread in front of visitors gives young people an opportunity to see how it is made and learn about the tools traditionally used, said Salwa Hamdi, a homemaker. But the craft will only survive if young people are willing to learn it rather than regard it as a tradition belonging to the past, she said.
That is where the future of saj baking remains uncertain.
"I am trying to teach my only daughter this craft, but she still refuses," Omar said. Her daughter sees saj baking as an old tradition and would rather learn new skills suited to her generation.
Few others show an interest in learning either. Young people today, she said, would rather look ahead than hold on to old traditions.
Back by her wood fire, Omar reaches for another ball of dough, continuing the practice her grandmother taught her. The bread may be finding its way back onto Lebanese tables, but whether the skill behind it will survive another generation remains uncertain.
