A World Beyond Sourdough

Can’t find flour? Try Italy’s chickpea-based farinata | Getty Images

From tortillas to roti to farinata, what to make instead of sourdough for the 1,000th time

So yes, everyone’s making sourdough now. But those tangy loaves are just the tip of the baguette (sorry) when it comes to the millennia old tradition of breadmaking around the world. It seems the alchemy of transforming flour and water and some kind of leavening (or not, as in the case of flatbreads) is universally comforting, as evidenced by the gazillions of bread varieties that anchor meals virtually everywhere on the planet. These simple starches are also in many ways our most accessible gateway to other cuisines, familiar and often achievable without much in the way of special ingredients.

For me, baking up some farinata or steaming mantou has helped me remember a time not long ago when we could all travel freely — when I would spend days wandering foreign streets, following my nose into some local bakery to discover something warm and soothing in an unfamiliar place. Plus, while you can still buy classic sourdough almost anywhere in the country, finding Portuguese sweet bread and Moroccan msemen can be a lot harder. Here, then are a few recipes from around the world to help us break the monotony of breaking bread.

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Tortillas

What you’ll need: masa harina or flour, fat, salt

The next time you make a pot of beans — which you are definitely doing — make some fresh tortillas to go with them. Beans and tortillas have been getting cozy since long before an avocado met a slice of toast, and they’re just as simple to make yourself. For corn tortillas, use fresh masa if you can find it, but masa harina, which is available in many supermarkets and online, also produces great results. Don’t have a tortilla press? Smoosh balls of dough under a cast iron or other heavy pan. For flour tortillas, you’ll need some kind of fat, be it lard, bacon fat, shortening, or oil. An ex and I used to roll these out with a metal pipe from the hardware store, as was the tradition in his Mexican household, but any rolling pin will do — the world is heavy enough as it is. Eating these hot off the pan reminds me less of Mexico City and more of the “El Machino” conveyor belt at Chevy’s that used to mesmerize me as a kid with its fresh, puffy circles long before Krispy Kreme.

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Roti puffs up bubbly in a cast iron pan

Roti

What you’ll need: whole-wheat flour (pastry or AP), oil, salt

Though naan usually gets the spotlight, roti is the king of all Indian breads, says food writer and cookbook author Priya Krishna, for its versatility and sturdiness, something all of us could use a bit of now. It’s also extremely simple to make — it doesn’t require any leavening, and if you just knead it well and let it rest, it will puff up nicely in the hot pan. This recipe calls for atta, a finely ground whole wheat flour, but whole wheat pastry flour, regular whole wheat flour, or half whole wheat and half all purpose are all suitable substitutions.

Farinata

What you’ll need: chickpea flour, oil, salt

Ceci, or chickpeas, are a staple in Italy, and variations of the chickpea flour-based flatbread known as farinata exist throughout the country. The Genoese version, which goes by socca in Nice, not far from the Italian border, is a particularly popular local street food. It emerges from wood-fired ovens in big, round pans and is sliced into wedges — thin and crisp and fragrant with olive oil that seeps into the paper it’s wrapped in. All you need is chickpea flour and olive oil — I’ve been finding chickpea or garbanzo flour on supermarket shelves more often than flour these days, but if you have a ton of dried chickpeas, you can also try grinding them in a blender and sifting out the fine flour. I like eating farinata straight out of the oven and unadorned, but it also pairs well with caramelized onions or any kind of hard cheese grated over the top top while it’s still hot.

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Moroccan Msemen works with both sweet and savory preparations and cooks up on the stove-top

Msemen

What you’ll need: AP flour, semolina flour, sugar, yeast

“Follow the bread, wherever it takes you,” chef M’hammed Benali once told me. He was explaining why he first left Morocco and cooked in restaurants from Seattle to San Francisco before opening his own place, Casablanca, in Honolulu. Here, instead of providing utensils, he serves a round Moroccan flatbread to eat with — the feeling of the soft warm bread in the mouth is much preferable to cold metal forks, he insists. This same feeling is all over Morocco, where community ovens and griddles set up in the medinas to make all kinds of daily breads and flatbreads. Msemen, a yeasted bread layered with butter, is one of the most ubiquitous and my personal favorite. It lends itself to sweet breakfasts drizzled with honey or savory meals when stuffed with roasted vegetables and meats. Msemen requires both semolina flour and regular AP flour, and a good amount of oil and butter which are folded in like an abbreviated version of laminated croissant dough.

Pita

What you’ll need: AP flour, oil, yeast, salt

Pita is the most common bread throughout the Levant and as far as Egypt, says Anissa Helou in her book Feast, Food of the Islamic World. So central is it to the local culture, that “in Egyptian pita is called aysh — which means ‘life,’” she writes. Her recipe for pita bread comes out a little softer and thicker than what’s found in stores — it involves flour, yeast, and olive oil, as well some time (the dough rises twice). Once in the oven, the rounds inflate like balloons almost instantly — turn the oven light on to watch the spectacle. Tip: Place your baking sheet in the oven as it’s preheating for maximum puff.

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Portuguese sweet bread can be baked in all sorts of fun pull-apart shapes

Portuguese sweet bread by way of Kona, Hawai‘i

What you’ll need: AP flour, yeast, butter, sugar, eggs

This is a rich bread, like a decadent challah, brought to Hawai‘i by Portuguese laborers — the ones who came to Kona were known to be dairy farmers, which might explain the abundance of butter. On Hawai‘i Island, the Kona Historical Society still maintains an open-air, wood-fired stone oven that they light at 6 a.m. so that loaves emerge around 1 p.m., and where people are encouraged to gather throughout the process and talk story. It’s a reminder of the communal ovens that exist around the world, from Morocco to Hawai‘i — less of a commercial enterprise and more of a neighborhood resource that creates bonds like the gluten in well-kneaded bread. The Kona Historical Society’s recipe makes four loaves, but you can easily halve or quarter it — you’ll need yeast, flour (either bread flour or all purpose works), sugar, butter, and eggs, and about two hours of rising time.

Mantou

What you’ll need: AP flour, sugar, yeast, milk, oil

In northern China, wheat (not rice) is the most popular traditional starch, and mantou — steamed, unfilled and light and fluffy — is the region’s equivalent of sliced white bread. It’s an ideal accompaniment for any meal or even dessert, when it’s deep fried and dunked in sweetened condensed milk. This subtitled Mandarin-language YouTube recipe from Mun’s Flavor has a soothing ASMR-like quality and I found it way better than any English-language recipes — and then fell down the rabbit hole of Chinese YouTube videos on all the different varieties of Chinese steamed breads, some mesmerizingly intricate. I suggest you do the same.

Martha Cheng is a writer and editor based in Honolulu, Hawaii

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