Lahoh

One bread, several names

Lahoh is the Arabic name, written لحوح (laḥūḥ). Somali speakers say laxoox in the north, including Somaliland and Ethiopia’s Somali Region, while canjeero is the usual word in southern Somalia. Wikipedia lists the bread as a regular part of meals in Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and notes that Yemenite Jewish immigrants made it popular in Israel.

Its taste is slightly sour and its texture spongy, as a 2023 study in the journal Foods puts it. Wikipedia’s article on Somali cuisine describes the Somali version as smaller, thinner and sweeter than Ethiopian injera.

Batter, spiral and lid

Laxoox was historically made from flours without gluten, above all sorghum, which remains the preferred flour. Today cooks use a blend of grains such as sorghum, millet, barley, maize and cowpea, often with some refined wheat flour for softness. In a 2022 survey published in the Journal of Ethnic Foods, every respondent in Somaliland and Ethiopia’s Somali Region used at least two kinds of grain.

The batter is beaten by hand in the evening and left to ferment overnight. Some cooks add a little sour batter saved from the last batch, a starter called dhanaanis. In southern Somalia a pre-cooked dough of flour and hot water, cajiin, is often added to help the batter hold air, but the same survey found no one using it in Somaliland.

In the morning the batter is cooked on a flat cast-iron griddle called a dhaawe or dawa. The cook spreads it outward in a spiral with the flat base of a cup, then covers it with a domed lid. After two to five minutes the bread is done, never turned: the underside is set, while the top has risen in the steam and is dotted with small holes known as “eyes”. The survey’s authors describe a neat spiral as a sign of a talented cook. In Hargeisa the griddle is often heated over a charcoal firebox called a girgire, or over a gas stove.

At the breakfast table

Every respondent in the 2022 survey ate the bread at breakfast. Tea was its most common companion, followed by suqaar (sautéed meat and vegetables), maraq (meat stew) and beer (sautéed liver); eggs, goat ghee (subag), honey, sugar and sesame oil also appeared. Wikipedia gives a similar picture: laxoox with subag, oil, sugar or honey, or with liver and onions or suqaar, and almost always with Somali tea.

Some families, notably in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, also eat it at lunch or dinner, and about one respondent in five ate it at iftar, the meal that breaks the fast during Ramadan.

Kitchen knowledge and history

According to the 2022 survey, laxoox has long been made by women, and its methods have passed from cook to cook by word of mouth. Both studies note the reassurance of the evening ritual: the sound of batter being mixed by hand is a sign that there will be bread the next morning.

The 2022 survey, which visited Hargeisa, Berbera and Beer in Somaliland as well as cities in Somalia and Ethiopia, found that recipes had drifted apart in recent decades. Kneading machines introduced in the late twentieth century still make cajiin in southern cities, but those in Somaliland’s cities were destroyed or dismantled in the conflict before the civil war and never replaced. Somaliland cooks kept to multigrain flours instead, a style the authors call “new heritage”.

The 2023 study collected bread from nine households in Somaliland: laxoox from seven Somali families and Yemeni lahoh from two Yemeni refugee families, a reminder of centuries of trade and migration across the Gulf of Aden. In Emblem World, lahoh sits in the Somaliland food collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.