Kubaneh
The bread of Yemenite Jews, traditionally put into the oven on Friday before Shabbat and taken out on Saturday morning — it bakes all night at a very low temperature. The long bake gives something no shortcut can: the dough browns slowly, the bread darkens to chestnut and takes on an almost toffee flavour. The second pillar is butter between layers of paper-thin dough — once baked, the bread tears into spiral strands.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Dough 15 min
- Rising 90 min
- Shaping with butter 40 min
- Second rise 45 min
- Overnight bake 720 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneKnead a soft, slightly sticky dough
Mix the flour, water, yeast, sugar, honey and salt and knead 10 minutes. The dough should be soft and slightly tacky — a stiff dough cannot be stretched translucent and the layers never form.
Ingredients: 600 g strong bread flour · 380 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 3 tbsp sugar · 2 tsp salt · 1 tbsp honey
Rise 90 minutes until doubled
Cover and leave 90 minutes, until doubled. A well-risen dough stretches more easily and gives a lighter crumb.
Ingredients: 600 g strong bread flour · 380 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 3 tbsp sugar · 2 tsp salt · 1 tbsp honey
Divide into eight balls
Divide the dough into 8 equal balls and rest them under a cloth for 15 minutes. The rest relaxes the gluten, without which the dough springs back at every attempt to stretch it.
Ingredients: 600 g strong bread flour · 380 ml water · 7 g dried yeast · 3 tbsp sugar · 2 tsp salt · 1 tbsp honey
Stretch on an oiled bench
Oil the worktop and stretch each ball with your palms into a thin, nearly translucent sheet. Do not flour it — flour dries the dough and makes it tear, while on oil it slides and stretches thin.
Ingredients: 200 g butter · 3 tbsp oil
An oiled bench and a translucent sheet — no flour.Smear on the butter with your fingers
Spread very soft butter across the whole sheet with your fingers. Do not melt it — liquid butter soaks into the dough instead of separating the layers. About 20 g per sheet, and it should look like a lot.
Ingredients: 200 g butter · 3 tbsp oil
Butter soft, not melted — spread with the fingers.Roll into a rope, then a coil
Roll the sheet into a thin rope, then the rope into a coil, and set it in the dish spiral side up. This double operation multiplies the layers — one sheet becomes more than a dozen, which is why the bread tears into strands. Repeat with the remaining balls: stretching, buttering and coiling all eight sheets takes about 25 minutes in total.
Ingredients: 200 g butter · 3 tbsp oil
A rope wound into a coil — one sheet, a dozen layers.Pack tightly and let it rise
Pack the coils tightly side by side in a buttered lidded ovenproof pot (about 22–24 cm across) and brush the top with the remaining butter. Cover and leave for 45 minutes, until the dough is visibly puffy; towards the end heat the oven to 100°C. If you want eggs baked with the bread, set them on top in their washed shells.
Ingredients: 200 g butter · 3 tbsp oil
Bake twelve hours at 100°C
Cover tightly and bake 12 hours at 100°C. In the morning the bread is deep chestnut and moist inside. Serve torn by hand with the eggs, grated tomato and zhoug.
Ingredients: 6 pcs eggs · 4 pcs tomatoes · 4 tbsp zhoug
Before you start
The eggs bake with the bread
Eggs in their shells baked with the bread for twelve hours end up with beige-brown whites and creamy yolks with a mild, faintly caramel flavour. The same eggs as in hamin and huevos haminados — dishes put into the oven before Shabbat so that nothing has to be cooked on Saturday.
The shortened version
With no night to spare, bake 3 hours at 150°C. The bread will be good and the layers will separate, but it never reaches the dark colour or the caramel depth — those twelve hours are what make kubaneh its own thing.
Two days and reheating
Kubaneh keeps two days wrapped in film. Reheat it whole and covered, 15 minutes at 160°C — the butter melts and the strands pull apart again. A microwave turns it to rubber.
