A New Afghan Bakery, in New York’s Golden Age of Bread

As the city’s bakeries person grown progressively culturally specific, representing far-flung cuisines and styles—see Librae, successful the East Village, which deploys Danish techniques and Middle Eastern ingredients similar za’atar and achromatic lime—they person besides leaned into the culinary individuality of New York. Radio Bakery, a spinoff of a Ridgewood edifice called Rolo’s, sells bacon-egg-and-cheese focaccia by the slice; Elbow Bread, inspired by the Jewish past of the Lower East Side, offers a challah croissant and a buckwheat latte.

Perhaps nary is arsenic circumstantial arsenic Diljān. Ford’s partners successful the concern are Ali Zaman and Mohamed Ghiasi, a brace of Afghan American restaurateurs. Zaman, who is thirty, and Ghiasi, who is twenty-eight, went to the aforesaid precocious schoolhouse successful Queens, arsenic did their fathers, who are veterans of the section edifice industry. In 2021, the younger Zaman and Ghiasi opened Little Flower, a halal java store successful Astoria, which became a beloved haunt of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who besides frequents Zaman’s father’s restaurant, Sami’s Kabab House. Ford, who lived successful Astoria, was a regular astatine Little Flower, too, and Zaman and Ghiasi enlisted him to revamp the café’s pastry menu, devising items specified arsenic a jalapeño-cheddar tart with halal beef bacon. When the brace decided to unfastened Diljān, wherever they planned to absorption connected naan-e panjayi—the chewy, yeasty Afghan flatbread that they’d grown up eating—Ford was their archetypal call.

Diljān, connected Hicks Street, is not acold from the formidable queues of L’Appartement 4F, but it’s adjacent person to a agelong of Atlantic Avenue wherever Lebanese and Syrian immigrants flocked successful the mediate of the twentieth century, aft the diminution of Manhattan’s Little Syria. The thoroughfare is dotted with time-tested Middle Eastern businesses, including the spare but inviting Yemen Café, with its steaming platters of slow-roasted lamb and self-serve dispenser of saccharine milky tea, and the market store Sahadi’s, which inactive uses take-a-number deli tickets to capable orders for dried effect and nuts by the pound.

Zaman and Ghiasi—a erstwhile theatre histrion and a real-estate developer, respectively—have a endowment for riffing connected classical New York tropes. After Little Flower, they opened a halal fast-food antagonistic called Blue Hour wrong a state presumption successful Bushwick; the interior of Diljān, with its crimson tiles and stainless-steel counter, is meant to evoke some the Afghan emblem and the sidewalk java carts that their fathers utilized to operate. “I deliberation radical conscionable deliberation Afghan nutrient is, like, kabab, and it’s mode much than that,” Zaman told me. Standing down the counter, Ford handed maine a slab of puffy, finger-pocked aureate bread, its shiny aboveground flecked with sesame and nigella seeds, to beryllium eaten with a brace of cream-cheese dips. One was speckled with chopped beef bacon and scallion. The different was blended with sour-cherry jam, inspired by a elemental meal of Zaman and Ghiasi’s childhoods. (Their parents would substitute Philadelphia for the clotted pick they mightiness person had successful Afghanistan.)

In Afghan cuisine, naan-e panjayi is ubiquitous, arsenic apt to look successful a meal dispersed arsenic it is to beryllium served with stews and roasts astatine dinner. Before signing connected to Diljān, Ford had ne'er made it. He started by researching what benignant of wheat grows successful Afghanistan. From American mills, Ford sourced flours stone-ground from varietals akin to those astir commonly recovered successful Afghanistan and began experimenting, vetting each iteration of the breadstuff with Zaman, Ghiasi, and their families. Zaman and Ghiasi gave notes connected however wheaty they wanted it to sensation (very); Sami, Zaman’s father, would archer Ford if it was excessively heavy oregon excessively salty. The rows of dimples, Ford told me, are expected to beryllium arsenic consecutive arsenic arrows. “I’m inactive moving connected that,” helium added.

The dimples, and the bread’s oblong shape, springiness it a passing resemblance to focaccia, though Ford seemed to find the examination reductive. “It mightiness punctual maine of a focaccia due to the fact that I learned however to marque focaccia first, but that’s conscionable portion of the strategy we’re trying to break, right?” helium said. “There are truthful galore Italian and French bakeries due to the fact that that’s the standard, but I deliberation determination should beryllium much radical being immersed successful this benignant of baking.” Ford hopes to separate Diljān by prioritizing contented implicit hype. “We won’t beryllium selling thing that we telephone a croissant,” helium said, though helium acknowledged that “any bakery that’s doing well” is selling pâtisserie. “People conscionable emotion that shit,” helium continued. “So what bash we do? We usage Afghan flavors. We didn’t privation to bash a pistachio-rose”—a Middle Eastern operation that has already go a cliché of trendy pastry. “It has to beryllium deeper,” helium said, assessing a tray of laminated confections. One, shaped successful a much defined crescent than that of a emblematic croissant, curved similar the emblem of the Ottoman Empire; Ford piped it afloat of the pale-yellow pastry pick that gave it its name, the Saffron Shah. From a tiny tray of sheer pira—Afghan beverage fudge, made with cardamom and orange-blossom water—he utilized a cooky cutter to extract glossy circles to acceptable into a Danish-like pastry, betwixt layers of a vanilla pastry pick and diplomat cream. The texture of the finished merchandise was delightfully riotous, shards of crisp aureate crumb collapsing into the pleasingly claggy fudge and luscious custard.