Even as a child Karen Lebsanft felt compelled to take on responsibility for others around her. That role carried over to her work, community and family life to such a degree that it’s only been very recently that she’s realised – after twenty-five years – that she needs to make time for herself. So she made up for lost time, setting a personal challenge of running the New York Marathon.
When is a biscuit not a biscuit? When it’s lavosh!
If you ask Karen Lebsanft, the co-founder and CEO of Kurrajong Kitchen, ‘am I allowed to call it a biscuit?’ you get a very terse reply: “no you are not.”
According to Karen lavosh is a flat bread; technically it is bread made without yeast and historically goes back to Armenia, where every village had their special lavosh recipe.
Karen and her husband Ben perfected their particular technique in the kitchen of Clifford’s restaurant in the New South Wales village of Kurrajong.
“We began serving lavosh to the customers of our restaurant; we would serve it up on cheese platters with dips and salsa and they loved it. In fact they loved it so much customers began asking if they could take some home.”
In a short space of time Karen and Ben were making thirty packets a week to give to their restaurant customers. Fast forward that twenty-five years and they’re now making over seven hundred and fifty thousand pieces of lavosh a day.