Miller Magazine Issue: 124 April 2020

60 MILLER / APRIL 2020 Flatbreads are the oldest of all bread types which are consumed in the Middle-East, Turkey, Indian subcontinent, North Africa, Southern Europe, and Central America (Mis- kelly, 2016). There are more than 60 types of flatbread in the world, two-layer Syrian flatbread is one of them, differ in shapes, sizes, and recipes (Köten, 2017). Tradition- al flatbreads include leavened, unleavened, one-layer and tow-layer flatbreads (Quail, 2016). Khubz (khubooz, khubuz or chubz) in Arabic language refer to all kinds of breads. Yeast-leavened two-layered flatbread is the most consumed bread type in Syria, Leba- non, Palestine, Egypt and Gulf countries. This type of flatbread has different names from country to country kmaj, baladi, ara- bic, shami…etc. (Köten, 2017; Popper and Hamed, 2020). It has no crumb, a soft con- sistency and is easy to fold and fill (Popper and Hamed, 2020). Two-layer Syrian Arabic flat bread has now become popular in many other countries including the United States, England, and Australia (Quail, 2016). The civil war that emerged in Syria on March 15, 2011 caused Syrian people exposure to forced migration. Most of Syrian immi- grants settled in Turkey. The number of Syr- ians in Turkey registered under temporary protection in March 2020 was 3,587 million people. Most of them settled in İstanbul, Gaziantep, Hatay and Şanlıurfa. The culture of food differs between Syrians and Turks, especially the type of bread consumed. The Syrians entered the bakery sector since the day they came to Turkey. Turkish people are now calling this bread the Syrian lavash bread. Syrian companies opened large fac- tories in many organized industrial zones, particularly Gaziantep, Nizip, Hatay, Mersin, Adana, Ankara, Istanbul, Kocaeli and Urfa. “The aims of using flour additive in flatbread industry is to optimize flour dough machinability and preventing bread staling. During bread staling bread firmness and fragility increase because of drying and starch retrogradation. Due to the differences in baking Syrian flatbread as compared with other bread like pan bread it is wrong to recommend the same types of bread improvers for both of them.” Syrian flat bread improvement Prof. Farhan Alfin Prof. Dr. Farhan Alfin is working as a production supervisor at Darıca Flour Mill, Trabzon, Turkey. He obtained his Ph.D. from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, from the Department of Food Engineering in 2000. He worked at Avrasya University, Trabzon from 2005 to 2019 and held the position of Head of the Food Engineering Department. He worked at Albaath University in Homs City, Syria at the food engineering department from 2000 to 2015, and he held the position of head of the department from 2006 to 2010. During that period, he offered his consultancy and education services to several flour mills in Syria. On another level, he worked as the executive manager of Alakhras Mill in rural Homs from 2009 to 2015. He is also the author of “Cereal Milling Technology” book written in the Arabic language.