Breads of many shapes sit in a row on the front counter at three-week-old Kouzeh Bakery, on display behind glass. My eye goes first to a thin disc propped up on a wooden stand. From several feet away, its sandy color and moonscape surface bring to mind a 13th century copper astrolabe that I fixated on at the also-just-opened David Geffen Galleries at LACMA less than a mile away.
Why Kouzeh is L.A.’s next great bakery
Up close, I read that it was latir, a leavened flatbread that originated in Yazd, a central desert province in Iran that once connected the ancient Spice and Silk Roads. Every baker seasons theirs differently.
Pastry chef Sahar Shomali, Kouzeh’s owner, sprinkles her version with black and white sesame seeds, cumin and fresh dill. Soon, I’d be ripping into its crisped edges and softer, pebbled center.
Next to the latir is ghelefi, a mounded loaf filled with turmeric-stained mashed potatoes and baked in a pan until the top is crackly. Fenugreek and caraway seeds, fragrant and crunchy, crown plush rolls called kopou. Fennel, cumin, coriander and black pepper perfume sistani, another round flatbread with barley mixed into the wheat flour for a nutty taste and pliant crumb. Kelaneh resembles a large, folded tortilla flecked green and white with scallions, garlic, cilantro and parsley sauteed in butter.
Latir, a flatbread crusted with sesame seeds, cumin and fresh dill, at the new Kouzeh Bakery in Mid-Wilshire.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
These are only some of the savory options. The sweet breads and pastries, scented with saffron, orange blossom water or baking spices, are in a case around the corner to the left.
It’s been four years since Santa Cruz cookbook author Andrea Nguyen sent me a message about a nascent cottage bakery in Los Angeles she thought might interest me. Shomali had previously made desserts with Sherry Yard at Spago and worked in pastry at other restaurants including now-closed Lucques and Hearth & Hound.
Late last decade, she’d started thinking about the barbari — the fundamental, chewy-crackery flatbread ever-present at Iranian meals — that she’d grown up eating in Tehran, and how the commercial versions available around Southern California didn’t have the same vibrance to them.
Could she come up with her own recipe for barbari?
She experimented with leavenings and techniques until she had a product that matched her memory: medium thick with a crust that was crisp rather than squishy, but still bready enough to want to swipe through dips or sop up soup.
Pastry chef Sahar Shomali at her new Kouzeh Bakery.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Shomali was happy with her barbari, and when Hearth & Hound closed in 2019, she gave herself over to research to expand her repertoire — to re-create regionally specific breads from across Iran’s 31 vast provinces.
She remembered filled breads she’d eaten with relatives in far-western Iran near the Turkish border. A friend found a couple of books on regional breads written in Farsi and sent them to her. She disappeared into blogs and YouTube videos. Recipes didn’t always meet her high expectations, but she employed them as roadmaps, adapting traditional Persian breads to her own taste and context.
Emerging from the pandemic, Shomali gave Kouzeh her full-time focus: Her lineup had expanded to a dozen-plus sweet and savory flatbreads, filled breads and pastries. She made online ordering available and set up at Melrose Place Farmers Market on Sunday mornings and Beverly Hills Market & Deli on Fridays.
The pastry case at Kouzeh in Mid-Wilshire.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
What wowed me back in 2022, beyond the utter deliciousness of her baking, was her commitment to specificity — in written descriptions, she named the origins of every regional specialty, giving each its dignity of place.
“I want a little bakery — nothing too huge, maybe not even any tables, something you walk in and out of — where I can make more and more types of Iranian breads,” Shomali told me in an interview then.
And now here it is, a storefront along the Miracle Mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. True to her intention, Kouzeh has no tables as of yet, only the counter full of her masterworks, now numbering around 25, with a short menu of coffee and aromatic teas.
She also fills shelves with provisions made by other Iranian women in California. Among them: Fariba Nafissi of ZoZo Baking, whose kolompeh, a soft, golden cookie filled with dates, nuts and spices, are a longtime favorite; Saba Parsa of Bay Area-based Saba Jams, whose almond-scented aprium-noyaux jam, made in collaboration with Samin Nosrat, I ate straight from the jar for breakfast while writing this newsletter; and Nicole Dayani, who cans small-batch torshi under her Nicole’s Kitchen label.
Cookbook author Anissa Helou talks with Sahar Shomali.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
There’s a specific, grounding joy in seeing a pop-up transition from the ephemeral to the “permanent.” It’s part of the rhythm of life now in L.A. dining culture.
At Kouzeh, it means taking pleasure in stepping inside, peering hard at the selection and choosing two or three enticements, each so distinct in form and texture.
I’m trying new things like two variations on cookies called koloucheh. One comes from the Caspian Sea region, with an elaborate, spiraling pattern, filled with a sugar-spice mixture that reminds me, in the most flattering way, of a brown sugar-cinnamon Pop-Tart. The other, from the southwest Khuzestan province, has a filling of dates, walnuts and coconut and pastry that shatters like a shell.
Among all these elaborate and painstakingly studied novelties, loaves of barbari, the bread that kicked it off, await almost humbly. I took one to go and then ripped off hunks in my car. It is as crisp and tangy and all-around excellent as ever.
Kouzeh Bakery: 5466 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 413-2222, kouzehbakery.com
An Armenian restaurant like no other
My review this week is about Yerord Mas, a destination for modern Armenian cooking housed in a former doughnut shop at the edge of Glendale and Burbank. It is easily one of the best restaurants to open this year so far.
Its calling card is Arthur Grigoryan’s basturma brisket sandwich, a brute, big enough for two, that gained a following in previous years when Yerord Mas (then spelled III Mas) was in pop-up phase. The sandwich, stacked high with basturma-spiced pastrami, loaded with pickles and dripping cheese sauce, is better than ever.
But there’s so much more to the cooking. Please read the review, and go experience the place for yourself.
Basturma brisket pita at Yerord Mas in Glendale.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
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