Breads and baking around the world
Flatbreads, buns and pies — leavened, unleavened and fried in oil.
The breads here divide not by shape but by what lifts them: yeast, soda, steam from within, or nothing at all. An unleavened flatbread on a dry pan and a deep-fried puff of the same dough are entirely different technologies.
Baking takes longer than the steps suggest: dough needs its rise, and sometimes a night in the cold. The total time in each recipe accounts for that, and it is the number to plan by.
20 dishes
- ArepasColombia
Cakes of precooked corn flour, griddled and split open to be stuffed.
40 min · Easy
- BaursakKazakhstan
Squares of yeast dough deep-fried into hollow puffs. The bread of the tea table and of every feast.
55 min · Easy
- BoorsokKyrgyzstan
Kyrgyz fried dough diamonds, hollow inside, for tea and the dastarkhan.
120 min · Easy
- ChipaParaguay
Bread rings of cassava starch and cheese, with no wheat and no yeast.
50 min · Easy
- CroissantFrance
A laminated yeasted dough with twenty-seven layers of butter. Temperature decides everything: dough and butter must be equally cold.
200 min · Takes practice
- GurasaSudan
A thick Sudanese pan bread, served with meat stew or sauce.
110 min · Easy
- Icelandic rye breadIceland
A sweet dark rye bread baked in a sealed tin for twelve hours at a low temperature.
740 min · Easy
- Imeretian khachapuriGeorgia
A round flatbread with the cheese inside rather than on top. The dough is made on matsoni, and there is as much filling as there is dough.
110 min · Medium
- InjeraEthiopia
A sour, porous flatbread of teff on a three-day ferment, serving as both bread and plate.
70 min · Takes practice
- Karelian piesFinland
A rye shell filled with rice porridge, brushed with butter out of the oven and served with egg butter.
85 min · Takes practice
- Kenyan chapatiKenya
A soft layered flatbread of wheat dough coiled into a spiral before rolling.
105 min · Medium
- MbejúParaguay
A starch and cheese flatbread set in a dry pan without a drop of water.
45 min · Medium
- Montreal bagelsCanada
Bagels boiled in honey water and baked in a wood oven, sweeter and thinner than New York's.
145 min · Takes practice
- Pão de queijoBrazil
Cheese balls of tapioca starch — a crust outside, a stretchy hollow inside. No wheat and no yeast.
50 min · Medium
- Roti canaiMalaysia
A flatbread stretched translucent and crumpled before frying. The layers come from air rather than butter.
50 min · Takes practice
- RuisleipäFinland
A dense sourdough rye bread, sour and with almost no wheat flour in it.
100 min · Takes practice
- Sel rotiNepal
A ring of fermented rice batter deep-fried crisp outside and soft within.
100 min · Takes practice
- ShelpekKazakhstan
Thin flatbreads fried in oil, the memorial bread of Kazakh tradition.
60 min · Easy
- Soda breadIreland
Bread on bicarbonate and buttermilk, with no yeast and no proving. Three minutes from mixing to oven.
55 min · Easy
- Trinidad rotiTrinidad and Tobago
A layered flatbread beaten into rags on the pan, served with chicken or goat curry.
130 min · Takes practice