Bambalouni

Bambalouni is a Tunisian sweet made by stretching soft yeasted dough into a large ring and frying it. The dough is taken up with wet hands, formed into a ring and dropped into the oil. Because the soft dough is shaped by hand rather than cut out with a cutter, the hole is large and irregular. Sugar is coated onto the hot surface fresh from the fryer, and the bambalouni is eaten on the spot. In Sidi Bou Said, near Tunis, it is also a favorite snack to eat while strolling the hilltop town, along with mint tea with pine nuts floating in it.

Handled with wet hands instead of stiffened with flour

The dough is made mainly from wheat flour, yeast and water and left to ferment. Depending on the recette (recipe: the proportions of ingredients and the method), egg yolk or olive oil may also be added. Rather than being made firm enough to cut out with a cutter, the dough is characteristically smooth and soft, and sticks easily to the fingers. That dough, full of bubbles produced by fermentation, is divided by hand and formed into rings.

In the recette from Mabrouk, a Tunisian restaurant in Paris, yeast and sugar are combined with lukewarm water, and the flour is added in stages. After the first portion of flour is mixed in and the dough has rested, egg yolk, olive oil and salt are added; the remaining flour is used to adjust the consistency, and the dough is rested again. This process, which separates resting for fermentation from adding ingredients, differs from mixing everything together at once.

When shaping, the hands are moistened with water. This keeps the dough from sticking to the hands and helps it hold together when it is pulled and stretched into a ring. Adding a lot of flour would make the dough stiff, so moistening the hands allows it to be stretched into a ring while staying soft.

Sugar on the surface, fresh from the fryer

The shaped dough is fried in enough oil for it to float. When fried, the dough, full of bubbles from fermentation, forms a thin crust on the outside while staying soft inside. Coating it with sugar or powdered sugar while it is hot layers the sweetness and crunch of the sugar on the surface over the soft texture inside.

Ring-shaped bambalouni frying in oil. Photo: Emna Mizouni, 2014-01-26, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the host site. Any editing at the time of original publication is unknown; no additional editing by us.

A bambalouni wrapped in paper and held in the hand, with sugar on its surface. Photo: Ali bannour, 2018-03-25, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the host site; no additional editing.

A name said to come from Italian, and the Tunisian ring

The Italian bombolone (plural bomboloni) is the name of a sweet made by frying yeasted dough and filling it with cream or jam. The word is said to derive from bomba, meaning “something spherical.” The Tunisian food-culture journalist Hatem Bourial suggests that the Tuscan name bombolino may have arrived by way of the Grana, the Italian Jewish community from Livorno.

Today’s bambalouni, however, is not a filled ball but a ring with a large hole. According to the interpretation that its shape and technique came closer to those of the local fried dough ftira, the name, which appears to be of Italian origin, remained while the sweet itself changed into a ring. Who brought it, and when, is not known.

The history of a shop that continues in Sidi Bou Said

According to the recollections of Kamel Mansouri, a shop owner in Sidi Bou Said, his grandfather began making bambalouni in 1926, frying them at the top of the hill and walking down to sell them to fishermen near the port. Around 1932, as traffic through the town grew busier, he reportedly began selling them at a shop on the hilltop. The local newspaper Al Chourouk also carries the story of a person who sold them there from 1926; in this way, the sales history of one shop rooted in this town has been passed down. When the bambalouni itself originated is uncertain.

Mansouri himself learned from his father from the age of 17, and says it took him more than 2 years to master the skill of keeping the same flavor. The work of handling soft fermented dough and handing over bambalouni fresh from the fryer has been passed down within the family over many years.

Besides enjoying warm bambalouni with mint tea, local reports also mention eating them drizzled with honey. Some are coated with sugar, while others get extra sweetness from honey. Even within the custom of eating the dough as soon as it is fried at the shop, differences in the finish remain.

Some people have continued making in Japan a sweet they encountered in Tunisia. The family behind a doughnut shop in Yamato, Kumamoto Prefecture, learned how to make it at a small shop in Sidi Bou Said and recreated it after returning home. Made with wheat flour, water, yeast and salt, and coated with sugar fresh from the fryer, it is one example from that shop.

Glossary