Oldest baker in Jerash shares secrets of success

JERASH — While most people are happy to buy their bread at any bakery they pass, the customers of 70-year-old baker Munthir Tantawi refuse to shop anywhere else. 

The oldest working baker in Jerash, Tantawi says he has won his customers’ loyalty by only using local wheat and preparing his own flour during his 55-year career. 

“Our family passed this profession through the generations. I learnt it from my father when I was a small child,” Tantawi told The Jordan Times in a recent interview.

“What makes my bread different is that I don’t buy readymade flour. I buy my own wheat from local farmers and I have it ground at the neighbouring mill, then I produce whole-wheat bread,” he explained.

He bakes the common Jordanian pita bread, and shrak bread, an unleavened, thin flatbread baked on a domed or convex metal griddle known locally as saj, as well as manaqish, a herbed flatbread.

Tantawi is also the only baker in town to make the traditional whole-wheat loaves. 

“I’ve been doing this job for 55 years, and I started my own bakery when I was 18,” he said, adding that he taught the trade to his children at an early age. 

Firas Damer, a 46-year-old Jerash resident, says he buys his bread from Tantawi every day.  

“He is the master of bakers in Jerash and makes the best bread,” Damer told The Jordan Times. 

Ahmed Zreiqat, a 75-year-old resident of the northern city, said he prefers Tantawi’s bread because it still has the “authentic, old and homemade taste” that he remembers from his childhood. 

But Tantawi’s base of loyal patrons extends beyond Jerash. 

The small bakery attracts customers from as far afield as Irbid, Amman, Mafraq and Zarqa.