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Khubz=Bread

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Hi,

this article implies that 'khubz' is some form of bread common in arab countries, which is not accurate. Khubz is the classic/formal arabic word for bread (check any english/arabic dictionary to verify that)

for example, to say 'pita bread' in arabic, you would say 'khubz pita' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.121.134.104 (talk) 13:09, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thats true, but when someone says "khubz" in the middle east its most likely the round, thin bread this article is reffering to--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 09:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's only because that's the most common type of bread! Also, the article is wrong to say that the bread is usually baked in a traditional oven - it's usually baked on a conveyor belt in a modern industrial baking oven. In Syria at least, bread baked the traditional way is called khubz arabi (Arabic bread). 94.170.103.124 (talk) 11:55, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just looking at old versions, does "khubz" in Arabian usage refer specifically to bread baked in the tannur? If so maybe we should go back to one of the older versions of the text. By the way, in England I've seen khubz used as a term for ordinary flat bread that forms a pocket, as opposed to the tannour-baked bread. 94.170.103.124 (talk) 12:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Khubz arabi = khubz = pita != khobz

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As far as I can tell, this article appears to be about pita bread. Pita or pitta is the common English word for the pocket flatbread known in Arabic as khubz arabi (Arabic bread), or sometimes simply khubz (bread) for short.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] All of the references given in the lead paragraph use the word "pita", not "khubz". The photos in the Gallery section are of pita bread. According to WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ENGLISH, the article title must use the established English name, pita, not the name in Arabic. Since the pita article already exists, this article should be merged and redirected to that article.

The article also in some places mixes up two usages of the word khubz, the first being short for khubz arabi or pita, and the second meaning all kinds of bread in general, even "foreign" bread such as French baguette (khubz franji). However, the article is clearly not meant to be about all the different kinds of bread made in Arab countries, of which there are dozens. Even if there was to be such an article, per WP:ENGLISH its title would have to use the English word "bread" rather than the Arabic khubz, for example, "Breads of the Arab world" or something similar.

There is another specific type of bread in Morocco called khobz. It is not pita, and should not redirect there. Until now it redirected here, which is also not correct. I've made a new separate article for it. In Morocco, a bread resembling pita is called batbout, but it is cooked in a pan rather than an oven.

If anyone has any convincing counter-arguments, I'm happy to consider them. Otherwise I plan to move forward with the process of merging this article to the pita article. --IamNotU (talk) 01:59, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've copied the relevant citations and material into the pita article, as well as to Tandoor bread#West Asia. I'm going to go ahead and blank this article because it's too ambiguous, and we shouldn't have an article for "the Arabic word for bread". I'd hoped there was a "breads" section of the Arab cuisine article that I could redirect it to, but there isn't... I'm not sure yet whether to make a new article, possibly "List of Arab breads", and redirect this there, or make this into a disambiguation page, to disambiguate khubz as the Arabic word for bread, which when used alone may refer to either pita (aka khubz arabi), tandoor bread (aka khubz tannur), Moroccan khobz, etc., depending on the region. --IamNotU (talk) 03:39, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "pitta". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. 1989.
  2. ^ Uvezian, Sonia (2001). Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey Through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Siamanto Press. p. 313. ISBN 9780970971685 – via Google Books. The best-known bread of the region is khubz arabi (or, simply, khubz), a round, flat, slightly leavened loaf about one-fourth inch thick and with a pocket inside. It is made in three different sizes: large (eight or more inches in diameter), medium (six to eight inches), and small (about five inches). In America, where it has become very popular, this bread is known as pita. A pocketless version is also available. In some Arab communities khubz arabi is called kmaj (from the Persian kumaj), while in others, kmaj refers only to the pocketless type. [...] In Lebanon pita is often referred to as town bread as opposed to the quite different bread of the countryside, known as khubz marquq or khubz al-jabal (mountain bread), although both are made from the same dough recipe.
  3. ^ Perry, Charles (21 August 2014). Davidson, Alan (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press. pp. 629–630. ISBN 9780191040726 – via Google Books. pitta - the Israeli and western name for the Arab bread called khubzʿadi ('ordinary bread') or names meaning 'Arab, Egyptian, Syrian bread' or kumaj (a Turkish loanword properly meaning a bread cooked in ashes), baked in a brick bread oven. It is a slightly leavened wheat bread, flat, either round or oval, and variable in size. Typically the bread puffs up in baking leaving it hollow inside like an empty pocket, making it particularly suitable for stuffing to form a sandwich.
  4. ^ Roden, Claudia (24 December 2008). The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 393–396. ISBN 9780307558565 – via Google Books. The most common type of Arab bread - now ubiquitous in America as pita - is round, flat, and leavened, with a hollow pouch running right through. It is made with various qualities of wheat flours. A coarse wholewheat flour makes a dark, earthy bread with a strong taste; a refined unbleached white flour results in a softer white bread. [...] The flatbread with a pouch which we know as pita is khubz, which means "bread," in the Arab world. In Egypt, eish baladi (eish means "life" and baladi means "local") is made with a mix of whole-wheat and unbleached white flour, while the one made with white flour is called eish shami (shami means "Syrian").
  5. ^ der Haroutunian, Arto (23 March 2009). Middle Eastern Cookery. Grub Street Publishers. ISBN 9781908117892 – via Google Books. Better known as pita bread in the west, khubz Arabi is the ideal bread for eating with most Arab food.
  6. ^ Marks, Gil (17 November 2010). Encyclopedia of Jewish Food. HMH. ISBN 9780544186316 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Wright, Clifford A. (2003). Little Foods of the Mediterranean: 500 Fabulous Recipes for Antipasti, Tapas, Hors D'Oeuvre, Meze, and More. p. 61.

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:08, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
To not merge as a combined article would be clunky; cultural features of Khubz are distinct from those of Pita and flatbread, warranting separate coverage. Klbrain (talk) 02:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest merging this article with Pita article because they are basically about the same subject. Shorouq★The★Super★ninja2 (talk) 12:04, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Pita is Greek for flatbread. Khubz is Arabi for flatbread. Flatbread is English for flatbread. So merge them all under flatbread? No, that'd be silly, wouldn't it? Then people looking for Pita wouldn't find a Pita page. But Khubz (Khubza Arabi) is a thing - for hundreds of millions of people - and people looking for Khubz (with variants that make it distinctive from Greek pita bread, BTW) wouldn't find that. Just because you have no experience of the Middle East or its cuisine - less ubiquitous than Greek in the US/Europe, but finding increasing popularity (and attracting a great deal of attempts at appropriation on the way), is not a reason to delete it! Next we'll be defining hummus as Greek and then we'll be starting out down a whole world war three rabbit-hole... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 03:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: there's a duplicate discussion at Talk:Pita#Merge proposal. Some people seem to think that khubz is a type of bread. It is not. It is the Arabic word for bread, in general, all bread everywhere, not just flatbread. See above. That means that no article with the title "Khubz" should exist; per WP:USEENGLISH it would instead be "bread".
We could change the title of this article if it was about an identifiable subject that doesn't already have an article. However, this article is a misguided and misleading jumble of at least two different types of bread. The English word for the type of pocket-flatbread called khubz 'arabi is "pita" (see the pita article for citations). The parts of this article that refer to khubz 'arabi are already included in the pita article, which is not only about Greek pita. People looking for information about it can in fact find it there. The other parts that refer for example to khubz tannur (what is shown in the photo) are already included in Tandoor bread#West Asia, etc. It could be possible to write a general article called e.g. "Bread in the Arab world" (or a subsection of "Arab cuisine") but this is not it, either in name or content. Unless there's a better suggestion, this article should most likely just be deleted at this point. --IamNotU (talk) 23:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm honestly not that interested in bread, which is always the danger because you're proposing just deleting this tiny little bit of the Arab world's culinary heritage and because of the low participation from the region in en-wiki, you'd probably push it through if you were willing to put more passion into it than I have, which is about two grains. But right now, you have no consensus to delete or merge - kubz tannur is NOT tandoori bread. Kubz Arabi is NOT pita bread. Why not just leave it alone until someone who cares improves it, rather than excising the Arabs and their bread? Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 03:56, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The charge that I'm proposing to delete anyone's heritage or "excise the Arabs" is preposterous nonsense, and the comments based on assumptions about other editors' cultural backgrounds are inappropriate, as I noted on your talk page. Until now, I've been the only one to comment on this page in the last decade, and the only one to have taken an interest in actually identifiying and fixing its major problems. There's no excuse for this topic to have such shoddy treatment on English Wikipedia. I've proposed different solutions and asked for feedback, but the disparaging remarks are not constructive. If you're "honestly not that interested", how about you take your own advice and leave it for someone who cares?
The article's title clearly doesn't conform to Wikipedia's naming conventions. As numerous Arabic speakers and others have pointed out, khubz means all bread in general; if you look at the Arabic Wikipedia khubz article (ar:خبز), that's what it's about, and EnWiki's Bread article links to it. Secondly, the subject of this article is unclear. It's not about bread in general, nor Arab styles of bread in general (of which there are many), but a mashup of two distinct types of bread, as I described above in 2019. One is pita with a pocket, which is so common for example in Lebanon that it's usually just called "bread/khubz" there. Content about it belongs in the pita article, per the consensus of WP:ENGLISH. The other is the naan-like bread cooked in a tandoor, khubz tannur, which is so common in Iraq that it's just called "bread" there. That's not a reason to jam the two together in an article named "bread".
Regarding "Kubz Arabi is NOT pita bread", sure it is, and shouting doesn't change it. Your previously-stated stance that "pita is uniquely Greek" [1] isn't supported by sources, and your edit actually deleting all mention of Arab bread from the pita article and redefining it as Greek [2] does not adhere to WP:NPOV. There are half a dozen citations above and any number more are easily found, that show that the established word in English for two-layer flatbread from the Middle East, and the translation of "khubz Arabi", is "pita". If you don't have access to the OED, it says: "pita: A thick flat bread of the kind common in Mediterranean and Arab countries, usu. cut open and filled with a meat or other filling." --IamNotU (talk) 11:52, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kevo327, khubz is literally the word "bread", it means all bread in general. Often the most common type of bread in a particular place will just be called "bread", like in the West, sandwich bread is typically just "bread". In Lebanon especially, and in Syria, the most common is "pocket" flatbread, which in English is called "pita" (as is the pocketless Greek flatbread). The Lebanese and Syrian style tends to be larger and thinner than it is in Palestine and Egypt, but we still call it all "pita". Another very common type of bread in Arab countries is large, thicker pocketless bread cooked on the walls of a tandoor oven, in some places like Iraq it's also just called "bread". Most English speakers wouldn't call that "pita" - Iraqi khubz makers in the UK for example sell it as "naan". --IamNotU (talk) 12:50, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@IamNotU:, My question was whether there is culinary difference (usage of yeast or milk or other differences that might matter) but thank you for answering, as for the article i agree it needs some changes, as the name "khubz" is too ambiguous, the pocketed variant isn't something of "Arabic cultural heritage" it's made on a mass scale with machinery, and doesn't have any major differences from Pita bread. Tandoor bread or saj bread (the pocketless variants) are more culturally relevant but already have separate articles. I support the merge proposal, though with adding the proper redirects and a disambiguation page in the place of the current article when searching for "khubz". There is no reason that forbids you from doing it, as it is per policy and no convincing opposition was found. - Kevo327 (talk) 13:12, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kevo327, ok, thanks. Someone on the pita talk page also suggested a disambiguation page for khubz would be good. I actually started working on a draft of that a long time ago, maybe I'll put some more time into it. I'm just curious though, what "pita" means to you? You asked if there's a difference (in ingredients etc.) between pita and Arab pocket flatbread, and said that "it doesn't have any major differences from Pita bread". But what is pita bread then, if not Arab pocket flatbread? It's available all around the world now, but the yeast-leavened pocket pita (as opposed to the Greek/Turkish styles) is a Middle Eastern thing, probably medieval Arab but possibly older. There are also other pocket flatbreads like chapati, which is unleavened. --IamNotU (talk) 15:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@IamNotU: I'll happily quench your curiosity. At first, I had the impression that Pita bread is some sort of independent greek variant of bread (I think I'm not the only one with that impression), but after reading the Pita article I found out that it's just the same as our local pocket flatbread bread, with "Pita" being a more globally common name. As for the name "Pita" itself, it doesn't have a cognate in Arabic. some additional information if you're interested:

Locally in Syria, the most common variant is the machinery baked pocketed yeast-leavened Pita bread, just called khubz. The other variants have adjectives or nouns added to them to distinguish them from the common variant; 1- khubz asmar (brown bread) : is smaller and thicker than the common variant, uses whole wheat 2- khubz muhalla or khubz siyahi (sweetened bread or tourists bread): uses milk in addition to the common recipe 3- khubz tanour: tandoor bread 4- khubz saj: saj flatbread. These are the most consumed and available variants in Syria. - Kevo327 (talk) 16:01, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting, thanks. The Greek/Balkan pita is actually rather different, being unleavened and pocketless. It became known in the West mostly after WWII. My understanding is that Jews who came to Palestine, many of them from the Balkans, started calling the local pocket flatbread "pita" as well. Then it got popularized in English under that name, starting around the 1970s. So in English, there are these two kinds of basic flatbreads both called "pita", and they go in the same article. I guess in theory we could have a separate article for "Greek pita" but it doesn't seem necessary in English, though it would make sense in Arabic. There is actually an Arabic article ar:خبز البيتا, "pita bread", that talks about both Greek and Arab pita, which seems like an odd thing to do in Arabic. It's currently proposed to be merged to ar:خبز عربي, "Arab bread" (khubz Arabi, which is what it's called in the main khubz article). I don't know why it's that way, and there hasn't been any discussion so far. --IamNotU (talk) 17:18, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Davidbena, I agree, and I also oppose a merge per se, on that basis. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on where to go next? I don't think English Wikipedia should have an article named "khubz", exactly for the reason that it's the generic word for bread, and we already have an article for that. I'm unsure of what to do with the title though - if it should redirect somewhere, where? Or make it a disambiguation page, or just delete it? The content in this article that is about pocket pita bread (most of the citations are actually about pita) belongs in the pita article. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to an article about Arab styles of bread in general, but it would need both a different name and different content. I also wouldn't necessarily be opposed to an article about Arab versions of bread cooked in a tandoor (aka laffa, Iraqi pita, or taboon bread in Israel), but again "khubz" isn't the right title - I'm not sure what is, exactly. Since there's so little content at the moment, I thought it could live in Tandoor bread § West Asia, but I'd like to hear any other thoughts. --IamNotU (talk) 12:28, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The word "khubz" is the English transliteration of the Arabic word for "bread," but since the word is widely known and used throughout the Middle East, I see nothing wrong about having an article by that name on the English Wikipedia. It is the same with Japanese words or Hebrew words transliterated into English, and there are MANY articles like that on the English Wikipedia.Davidbena (talk) 17:15, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But what would it be about? We have articles with non-English titles when there is no established name for the subject in English. The name in English of khubz is bread. The Arabic khubz (ar:خبز) article is about bread, in general. I think it makes little sense to an Arabic speaker to see an article titled khubz, but it's only about pita and tandoor bread (and mixes them up with each other). Hence the merge proposal from an Arabic speaker. --IamNotU (talk) 19:08, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but I did not fully clarify myself. These transliterations of foreign words are not only used by native speakers, but rather used extensively by ENGLISH SPEAKERS as well, and by which names they are known and recognised. You see, foreign loanwords have entered the English language, and are known by English speakers under these names. Take Onsen, for example, which could have more easily been titled "Japanese Sauna," or "Japanese Hot Springs," or take Brit milah which could have more easily been titled "Rite of circumcision (Jewish)." You see, Wikipedia still has a place for these foreign names and titles.Davidbena (talk) 19:22, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge I support IamNotU's position -- Flat, pocketed bread began to be popular in the West in the 1970s, and was called "pita", "Arab bread", "Syrian bread", or "pita bread" at the time. There are lots of reliable sources showing that these are synonyms search between 1960 and 1975: "Pita bread is a flat Syrian bread..."; "This special bakery produces mostly Middle East "hollow bread" called Pita"; "the traditional Arab pita bread"; "You can buy pita bread in Middle Eastern stores and some supermarkets"; "Pita ( Arab bread)"; ... I suggest that there should be a disambiguation article Arab bread which distinguishes the pita and taboon variants. --Macrakis (talk) 18:05, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Macrakis. If we do that, then we could redirect khubz to the "Arab bread" disambiguation page. I think there's currently nothing in this article that's missing from the pita article. If we removed the content about pita from here, we'd be left with a small amount of content about tandoor bread in Arab countries, which is also already present in Tandoor bread#West Asia. What to do with that? Move it to Khubz tannur? I'm hesititant to have separate articles with the name of tandoor bread in every language of the nationalities that traditionally make it. But we do already have Taboon bread, Tandyr nan, Laffa, Tonis puri, Shotis puri, Naan, Sheermal, Taftan (bread), etc. - so I guess there's a precedent, though several of them are stubs. --IamNotU (talk) 18:57, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is an unfortunate tendency on Wikipedia to create separate pages for variants of closely-related foods or dishes in different countries or different languages, e.g., crema catalana and crème brûlée, even though we have WP:RS saying that they're "virtually identical"; similarly for feta, sirene, and beyaz peynir. This is a sort of WP:POVFORK which is hard to fight, because most of the people who are interested in the topic belong to one of the "factions": though the Elbonians disagree with the Ruritanians on everything else, they agree that the Elbonian crautma is radically different from the Ruritanian kaposroll, and they deserve separate articles because crautma is generally seasoned with anise, while kaposroll is seasoned with fennel. --Macrakis (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Upon further consideration of this subject, these foreign-language articles do not really infringe upon WP:POVFORK, but are rather bona fide articles of public interest with a unique message of their own, each one being independently notable and useful, and which cannot, with ease, be merged into other articles speaking roughly on the same subject, without complicating the issue.Davidbena (talk) 13:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Rearranged

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I rearranged the article to sort out the content and references to pita vs. tandoor bread, and replaced "khubz" with the English equivalent, "bread". It's still not right, because we should not have an article about "the Arabic word for bread". But at least it's not total nonsense now. The majority is about pita, there's almost nothing about tandoor bread (which was originally the subject of the article until people started adding stuff about pita years ago). --IamNotU (talk) 19:54, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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