Is Indian bread always flat?

[Sakkarin Profile]

I'm sure there's a simple answer, but when making my (nearly) daily round of bread rolls, I was contemplating using some to make a naan, and I wondered why it was that all the indian breads I can think of are flat, when most of our breads are big hunks of dough. I checked to see if there were any "big" indian breads, and it looks like there aren't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_breads

Sort of answering my own question, but maybe it's because they historically cook on "hobs" rather than use ovens. I suppose that begs the second question, why did we end up with ovens here?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Don't know, but my guess is that keeping a fire in for heating may be part of the answer?

I believe early ovens were upturned pots in the fire, this only works if your fire is big enough and alight long enough to heat the ground below and provide embers to pile up

People I saw cooking in India on fires used small fires alight for as short a time as possible, it was 30 C in the shade after all, even in the cool of the ghats people put on jackets, didn't light fires for warmth (not enough fuel to go round?)

[Renée Profile]

I guess that ovens were needed to make a family roast and essential for Yorkshire puddings, unless, of course, Aunt Bessie's were used, although they weren't available back in those days. Rice pudding, with a golden brown skin on top, cakes and making loaves of bread.

[karadekoolaid Profile]

I assume you mean "flat" in the sense that they`re not "dense", like European loaves.

Bhaturas, from Punjab, are not strictly "flat" - nor are pooris:

Bhatura - pan frito con yogurt.JPG (58.76 KiB) Viewed 3821 times

Otherwise, the answer to your question must be YES.
Bread is used to mop up sauce and many communities probably eat with their hands, so cutting a loaf would not appear to be normal.

[Pampy Profile]

I guess that ovens were needed to make a family roast and essential for Yorkshire puddings, unless, of course, Aunt Bessie's were used, although they weren't available back in those days. Rice pudding, with a golden brown skin on top, cakes and making loaves of bread.

But the family roast etc wouldn't have been "invented" before ovens came into being.

[Suelle Profile Website]

But the family roast etc wouldn't have been "invented" before ovens came into being.

It was customary for things like roasts, and perhaps milk puddings etc, to be cooked in communal ovens - often the village baker, as the ovens cooled down after baking the day's bread, long before domestic dwellings had ovens. So ovens were known, but not in general use for the working classes.

http://www.oldandinteresting.com/commun ... ovens.aspx

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I understood Sakkarin's question to be more, how come Europeans took to ovens and so tend to bake bread loaves and everything else, while Indians don't bake anything, not even bread? And without an oven, all bread is flat.

Roasts in Europe and India were originally cooked on an open fire, often on a spit, or some kind of BBQ arrangement, even after Europeans and Mesopotamians baked loaves of bread in some kind of oven, so I'm not sure roasts are relevant to his original question?

[Suelle Profile Website]

I think using the bread as a utensil to pick up food is probably the main reason flat breads originated.

[karadekoolaid Profile]

I`d always understood that both roast potatoes and yorkshire puds were placed underneath a whole side of beef. The beef was roasted on a spit and the grease dripped on to the items below; which were thus cooked by the heat of the fire and the grease. Beef was food for the rich; the poor (ie. the servants) got the veggies/puds, which were cheap.
Might just be an old wive´s tale, or maybe I`ve been watching too many Mediaeval TV shows!!
Sounds vaguely logical though, doesn´t it?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I think using the bread as a utensil to pick up food is probably the main reason flat breads originated.

Yes, but in the south where I was they eat rice and use no bread or other utensil to eat it, just fingers, so I'm not sure it would be a big factor

[kavey Profile Website]

I'm not sure if this is right but I think yeast being used in bread developed as a by-product of making beer / wine alcohols.

I believe the earliest beers were made with what we might call "wild yeast" now - i.e. microbes in the air that settled on / into the liquid as opposed to deliberately cultivated and introduced. I don't know when that transitioned to the deliberate cultivation / storage / introduction of yeast into beer / wine making.

So presumably there's a link between societies that made beer being the ones that began to make yeasted breads?

I would think that yeasted bread making spread with migration, but I imagine great swathes of the world simply never got that particular methodology or at least not until the modern era... whereas unleavened bread is the kind of thing you can find in virtually all ancient civilisations, even those that did also take onboard yeasted breadmaking at some point.

I don't know whether the increased need to keep the oven fires burning in colder climates like ours played a part in the development of ovens in individual homes or not but it's a really interesting thought.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

That's a good point Kavey, certainly the Egyptians used barm (yeast sludge) from brewing

[jeral Profile]

I seem to recall flat bread was laid on hot flat stones to cook, or now is "splatted" against the wall of a tandoor oven. Since stews are/were made, presumably in cauldron type fire pots, they could have put a lid on for a Dutch oven for yeast-risen bread couldn't they? Maybe risen bread loaves just don't appeal.

Did we start off by inventing ovens here or they just came about? I'm thinking they used to be the integrated iron cupboards either side of the open fireplace way back when. For small back-to-back terraced houses with tiny fireplaces and no outdoors for fires, and terrible smog anyway, maybe the miracle of gas piped into homes made indoor ovens possible for "everyone". I'm just guessing.