When we first thought up the idea of Pastry Passport, I knew that I wanted to talk to my friend Andrew Janjigian — bread baker, cookbook author, writer of the Wordloaf newsletter, mentor to many, and friend to me — and see what he could send our way. Andrew is Armenian and has long schooled me on the delicious pastries and breads of Armenian baking. When he was in town recently, he came in and demonstrated a pastry that immediately spoke to me: tahinov hats, a dough rolled out very thin and laminated with sugar and tahini, then baked until crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. (It’s pronounced tah hee nahv hahts) I described it to him as “the perfect walking-around snack.” Sweet from the sugar and savory from the tahini, and perfectly flaky and crispy.

Come in from 9am to 12pm on Saturday to get your passport stamped for tahinov hats! They are $6 each.

I was excited to get to learn directly from Andrew how to make tahinov hats (which translates to “bread with tahini in it,” roughly), and even more excited for him to talk to the newsletter. Here’s Andrew on Armenian baking, his upcoming cookbook, and why tahinov hats are so very more-ish.

Downtime Bakery: Tell me a bit about yourself and your baking background.

Andrew Janjigian: I’ve been baking bread and teaching bread baking for nearly 20 years now, first as a test cook and editor at America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated magazine, and now as a freelancer, at my own newsletter Wordloaf and beyond. I like to think of my work as bridging the worlds of professional and home bakers — I don’t have a bakery of my own, but loads of my friends do, and I hang out in them often, stealing learning all that I can from them. The goal of my work is translating the methods that professionals use for a home context so that anyone can make great bread.

DT: We’re going to be making tahinov hats this Saturday, based on your teachings last week. What is your relationship to this pastry? Any memories from eating it that stand out?

AJ: Armenians are as a rule pious and indulgent in equal measure, and tahinov hats is a perfect illustration of this contradiction. It’s traditionally served during Lent, since it is made without eggs or dairy, but is also a sweet, rich treat that could hardly be thought of as abstemious. It comes from various places throughout Western Armenia (i.e., the Armenian regions of the former Ottoman empire), including Marash, where my mother’s family is from. It’s made either with or without the addition of cinnamon (neither my mother nor hers added it), as indicated in the title of this great little documentary about it.

DT: What makes tahinov hats special? How should they taste?

AJ: Tahinov hats is rare in the world of yeasted pastries in that it is baked immediately after shaping, rather than being given a second proof. As a result, while it has the flaky layering of other laminated things like croissants, it eats more crisp and crunchy than airy, pushing it into cookie territory. As for flavor, it tastes a little like halva, another Middle Eastern sweet often made with sesame seeds.

DT: What do you wish people understood about Armenian baking that you think they might not understand? What makes Armenian baking special?

AJ: For reasons, Armenians have done a lot of moving around in the world, and wherever they landed—Beirut, Jerusalem, Paris, Los Angeles, Watertown—they became renowned for their bakeries. The most well-known Armenian breads are lavash, the paper-thin flatbread traditionally baked in a tonir, the Armenian equivalent of a tandoor oven, and lahmajun, the meat paste-topped flatbread often crudely thought of as Armenian pizza (which it predates, thank you very much). But perhaps the bread most beloved by Armenians themselves is choreg, the brioche-like eggy, sweet bread flavored with mahleb, a spice made from the kernel of a small cherry with an almond- and vanilla-like aroma. Choreg is traditionally served at the end of the Easter fast, but many Armenians make it for celebrations of all kinds, or even just because.

DT: Anything in particular you want to plug? Tell us what you’re working on!

AJ: Well I did just finish writing a book on bread baking, Breaducation, which comes out on 11/17. It doesn’t contain a recipe for tahinov hats (I didn’t have room for laminated products), though there are a couple of other Armenian breads in it. It contains everything I currently know about how to bake pro-level breads in a home kitchen and I think it’s pretty good.

Editor’s Note: Andrew’s book IS VERY GOOD and you can preorder it here ^^^ !