BREAD


From left: Pumpernickel canapes with brussels sprouts, apples and pears; pumpernickel from Daylesford Organic Farm; cooking roti in India; man’oushe


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Use roti to tell a story


A roti flatbread (also known as chapati, phulka or maani) may look innocent: an unleavened bread that can double up as both plate and spoon for whatever it’s being eaten


with. But the roti tells a story of early farming, trade routes and slave trading, indentured servitude and mass migration. While it’s been part of diets on the subcontinent for centuries, over the last 500 years of colonisation, roti followed the communities dragged away from their homelands in south Asia. Today it’s a staple in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and important to people of South Asian descent in South Africa and across the Caribbean.


WHERE TO START Malaysian restaurant Roti King in London makes them fresh to order, served with curries or stuffed with cheese. rotiking.has.restaurant


4 Bake your bread – twice


As far back as 3,000 years ago, Sardinian shepherds would head into the hills laden with parcels of pane carasau to sustain them. Also known as carta di musica, meaning


‘music sheet’, in reference to its thinness, it could last them for up to a year. Recently, archaeologists have found traces of this bread — still a Sardinian staple — in many of the megalithic stone dwellings scattered across the island. It’s made from durum wheat dough rolled into paper-thin circles and baked in wood-burning ovens. As they puff up like balloons, the still-soft rounds are each split into two discs, flattened and baked a second time until crisp.


WHERE TO START At Sheffield’s Domo Restaurant, it’s served with mazza frissa, a creamy dip made from milk and semolina. domorestaurant.co.uk


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Make peace with man’oushe


There are plenty of places in Beirut to get man’oushe, a za’atar-speckled flatbread traditionally served in the morning. But if you like your breakfast to have an


impressive civic legacy, head to the Souk el Tayab farmers’ market. It was founded in 2004 by Kamal Mouzawak as a means of uniting communities splintered along ethnic and religious lines after years of conflict, while also empowering women in particular to profit from their regional produce. Under the banner Make Food, Not War, the market has also helped to keep ancient culinary traditions — like proper man’oushe making — alive. soukeltayab.com


WHERE TO START The Lebanese Bakery in Holborn sells it freshly baked and topped with a huge variety of cheeses and meats. thelebanesebakery.com


Have a row about cornbread


Until industrial milling came to southern USA in the early 20th century, nobody used wheat flour or sugar for cornbread — stone- or water-ground cornmeal had


enough flavour and texture when mixed with just eggs, butter, buttermilk and maybe a raising agent. But the new steel mills ground corn more finely and the heat of the rollers robbed it of its flavour, resulting in bland, crumbly cornbread. In response, some cooks began adding wheat to hold it together, and sugar for taste. Others, however, dismissed the result as a cake. Today, if you want to start an argument in the South, this is one topic that’ll do it.


WHERE TO START Try jalapeño cornbread at London’s Caravan or check out Norfolk’s The Tudor Bakehouse. caravanrestaurants.co.uk tudorbakehouse.co.uk


NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.CO.UK/FOOD-TRAVEL 39


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