In 2023, Tel Aviv celebrated its first ever Jachnun Festival. Celebrity pastry chefs, jachnun joints and hungry crowds gathered at the hip settings of the city’s harbor, enjoying every possible version of the humble star of the party, the Shabbat Yemenite pastry. Alongside classic jachnun, visitors could try stuffed jachnun, spelt flour jachnun and even gluten-free ones. A stand offered Yemenite spicy sauce (zhug) tastings, and another featured a chili pepper eating competition. And to wash it all down, jachnun lovers were offered spiced black coffee, and fig and date arak liquor.

Jachnun is a slightly sweet rolled pastry, made of very thin layers of dough that are brushed with clarified butter. It is the Shabbat dish of the Jews of Aden, in today’s Yemen, and is baked overnight on Friday at a low temperature then eaten for breakfast on Saturday morning.

Israeli food writers wondered how Tel Aviv hasn’t had a jachnun festival until now, but my question is quite different: How did this unassuming pastry make its way from Aden to the heart of Israeli culinary consensus in just 75 short years? It stands there in pride alongside other classics like shakshuka, schnitzel, hummus and chicken soup. When and how did that happen?

First, to clarify, the famous Yemenite jachnun is actually from Aden, not Yemen. (Aden, which was the capital of South Yemen, became part of the country now known as Yemen only in 1990 after the unification of North Yemen and South Yemen.) The Adenite and Yemenite (mainly from around Sana’a) Jewish communities were separate and had different traditions.

Adenite and Yemenite Jews met for the first time in the Hashed (or Geula, “redemption” in Hebrew) transit camp arranged by The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1949 ahead of Operation Magic Carpet that brought them to Israel.

“In Hashed, with ingredients brought by The Joint, is where Yemenites first learned from the Adeni how to make jachnun,” said Moshe David, an Israeli of Adanite roots, a jeweler and author of the cookbook “Disappearing Flavors of the South.”

“More Yemenites learned how to make the dish in the camps in Israel,” where Yemenite and Adenite Jews lived together for years, he told me.

For hundreds of years Aden was a cosmopolitan strategic harbor city. It was ruled by the Ottomans and then by the British. Moshe believes that jachnun originated from an Ottoman pastry called gül böreği (rose-shaped borek). The pastry is made with yufka, a thin dough, thicker than phyllo, that’s used for many Turkish pastries, and is stretched to an almost transparent leaf, then spread with fat, just like jachnun. The original gül böreği, though, is stuffed with meat, while jachnun is only brushed with fat and then rolled.

In the past, jachnun was actually served as a sweet dish, topped with honey (and later, in Israel, with sugar).

“They used to serve it with halva or Turkish delight,” said David. “That’s what convinced me the origin is Ottoman. They would also serve it with quince jam,” a testament of the Adenite connection to the Silk Road and Persian cuisine.

In search for the origins of the dish, I found an unusual version of jachnun in two of Molly Bar-David’s books. Bar-David was a Jewish American who emigrated to Israel in the 1940s and documented Jewish dishes of immigrants that arrived in Israel from all across the Jewish Diaspora. She quotes a recipe for ghihinoon (Yemenite Cakes) from her Yemenite housekeeper, Margalit, who used to sprinkle chopped nuts, jam or cottage cheese on the dough before rolling it and baking.

I should add that the 1964 book is packed with condescending comments toward the many Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews mentioned in the book. Margalit (last name is not provided) was not spared. In general, this was in line with the way many Ashkenazi Jews at the time viewed Jews from Arab and Muslim countries.

Moshe thinks that Bar-David mistakenly mixed g’hin, “dough” in Yemenite, with ghihinoon. But when I asked a Yemenite-Israeli Facebook group about it, one member said she too spreads the dough with jam before baking. Still, most Yemenite Israelis in the group found that idea amusing, and jokingly suggested serving jachnun with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.

Jachnun evolved into a savory course, and became nationwide phenomena, fairly recently, in the 1980s when a chain of Yemenite restaurants named Nargila (hookah) took Israel by storm. Nargila offered a limited menu, and jachnun and malawach were the stars. The pastries were served with grated tomatoes mixed with z’houg, which became the standard for Yemenites and even for some Adenite Jews.

These days, jachnun is available in the freezer aisle at any supermarket in Israel, offering an inferior but easy option for those daunted by the labor-intense process of making the dish at home. On the weekends, fresh jachnun is readily available at pop-up roadside stands, cafes and even as part of the famous Israeli breakfast buffet in many hotels. This modest dish has officially become an Israeli staple.

Yemenite overnight pastry rolls (jachnun) with spicy tomato salsa

Recipe by Vered GuttmanCourse: Breakfast, PastriesCuisine: Yemeni, Israeli, JewishDifficulty: Difficult

Yields

jachnoon

Prep time

minutes

Cooking time

hours

Resting time

hours

Total time

hours

minutes

Jachnun is a savory-sweet rolled pastry made of very thin layers of dough that are brushed with a smoky, fenugreek-spiced clarified butter known as samneh. It is the Shabbat dish of the Jews of Aden, in today’s Yemen, and like other Shabbat dishes from around the Diaspora, it is baked overnight at low temperature in keeping with the Jewish law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath. The jachnun rolls come out golden brown, flaky but chewy, and rich in flavor from the caramelized sugars and the clarified butter (samneh).
While in the past jachnun was served as a sweet dish, topped with honey (and later, in Israel, with sugar), in Israel it evolved as a savory dish. Just like its close relative, pan-fried malawach, jachnun is served with a sauce of grated tomatoes mixed with a Yemenite spicy condiment called z’houg, and with overnight hard-boiled eggs.
These days, it is increasingly rare for Israelis to make jachnun from scratch, not only because the labor-intensive process is daunting, but because jachnun is available in the freezer aisle at any supermarket nationwide. That said, it is an inferior version, with none of the complexity or decadence of homemade jachnun.
Happily, fresh jachnun is readily available in Israel on the weekends, where it’s sold at many roadside pop-up stands, cafes and even as part of the famous Israeli breakfast buffet in many hotels. But if fresh jachnun isn’t available to you — or if you want to experience the magic of fresh-from-the-oven jachnun — I encourage you to try this recipe. It is a labor of love, but a perfect baking project for a cozy weekend at home and/or when you’re feeding a crowd.

INGREDIENTS

2 lb all-purpose flour
1 tsp dry yeast
4 Tbsp light brown sugar
2 Tbsp honey
3 ½ tsp kosher salt
2 ¼-2 ½ cups lukewarm water
¼ cup vegetable or corn oil
2-3 slices day-old bread (to pad the pot)
8 Tbsp melted butter, clarified butter (ghee) or oil
6-8 eggs (one per person), to serve
For the tomato salsa
2 ripe tomatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon z’houg (recipe here) or chopped Serrano to taste
Kosher salt to taste

DIRECTIONS

Put flour, dry yeast, sugar and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and mix a little using a spoon. Turn the mixer on medium-low and add honey and 2¼ cups water, then knead for 5 minutes. If it seems too dry, add 1 Tbsp water at a time, until the dough seems soft.
Remove bowl from mixer, cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 1 hour. After 1 hour, knead again for 5 minutes. Let the dough rest again for another hour, covered with plastic wrap.
Put ¼ cup oil in a small bowl. Divide the dough into two, roll each half to a 2-inch-thick log and cut into five equal pieces (for a total of 10 pieces). Roll each piece into a ball, dip in the oil to cover, and let rest on a baking sheet. Cover dough balls tightly with plastic wrap and let rest for 3-4 hours. Resting will make stretching the dough easier.
Preheat the oven to 200°F. Grease an ovenproof pot, put a layer of day-old bread at the bottom (optional, to prevent the bottom layer from becoming crispy) and top with parchment paper.
Use a rolling pin to roll the first ball into about a 10-inch circle. Using your hands, stretch the dough further into a very thin 15-inch circle. Do it slowly by lifting the sides of the dough and stretching again and again until you can almost see the countertop through the dough. (use the video below for reference.)
Using your hand or a pastry brush, spread about 2 tsp of the butter all over the dough. Fold the left third of the circle inside, and then fold the right third on top, like an envelope. Stretch the dough a little more and start rolling into a cylinder shape. Put in the pot. Repeat with the rest of the dough. (You can freeze some of the jachnun for later use. Simply wrap each roll individually in plastic wrap and put in a freezer bag. Bake it next time straight from the freezer, no need to thaw.)
Cover the jachnun pot with its lid. If the lid is not tight enough (or if there’s no lid at all), cover the whole pot with a double layer of aluminum foil.
Ideally, you should put the eggs in a separate small lidded pot next to the jachnun pot. Cover eggs with salted hot water and cover the pot. You can also just arrange the eggs inside the jachnun pot, but try to put them on the sides, so as not to disturb the jachnun itself too much (it will simply change its shape because of the eggs).
Transfer both pots to the oven and bake overnight, or for 8-10 hours.
To make the tomato salsa
Grate the tomatoes and mix with the rest of the ingredients. Add salt to taste.