Non

The tandoor bread of Central Asia, a dense disc stamped at the centre with a nail-studded chekich and slapped onto the clay wall of the oven to blister

Origin: Samarkand and Bukhara, Uzbekistan

From the journey of Wheat.

Non, lepyoshka in Russian, is the bread of Transoxiana, and it is the most immediately recognisable bread in Asia: a thick-rimmed disc with a dense, sunken, patterned centre, baked against the wall of a clay tandir. The pattern is stamped with a chekich, a small round tool studded with nails, which perforates the middle so that it stays flat whilst the rim rises. Bread carries more ceremony here than almost anywhere. It is never cut with a knife but torn, never placed upside down, and never allowed to touch the ground. A traveller leaving home takes a bite from a loaf which is then kept until they return. Samarkand non is famous enough across the region that people carry it home on aeroplanes, and the city insists that its water and its ovens make a bread that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. This is also the point at which wheat, moving east out of Mesopotamia across the oases, met the technology that would carry it further. The tandoor line runs from here south into Persia and India, where the same oven makes naan, and the noodle traditions of the region run east into China. Central Asia is where the grain's two great directions separate. The dough is enriched in a way that western flatbreads are not: milk and a little fat give a soft, slightly sweet crumb that keeps for days, and sesame or nigella seeds go on the rim.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 500 g strong white bread flour
  • 180 ml whole milk, warmed
  • 120 ml water, warm
  • 7 g instant dried yeast
  • 2 tsp fine salt
  • 1 tsp caster sugar
  • 40 g lamb fat or unsalted butter, melted

To finish

  • 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tbsp milk
  • 2 tsp sesame seeds
  • 2 tsp nigella seeds

Method

  1. Whisk the yeast and sugar into the warm milk and water and leave for ten minutes until frothy.
  2. Add the flour, salt, and melted fat and mix to a firm dough. Knead for ten minutes until smooth and elastic.
  3. Cover and prove in a warm place for ninety minutes, until roughly doubled.
  4. Knock back and divide into four. Roll each into a tight ball, cover, and rest for fifteen minutes.
  5. Take one ball and press it out with the heel of your hand into a disc about 20 cm across, working from the centre outwards and deliberately leaving a raised rim of about 3 cm all the way round.
  6. Stamp the flat centre all over with a chekich, or prick it densely with a fork, right through to the work surface.
  7. Heat the oven to its maximum with a baking stone or heavy tray inside. Brush the rim and centre with the egg wash and scatter over the sesame and nigella seeds.
  8. Slide the breads onto the hot stone and bake for twelve to fifteen minutes, until the rim is deep gold and puffed and the centre is browned and firm.
  9. Cool on a rack for a few minutes and serve warm, torn by hand.

Notes

A chekich is sold cheaply online and is the only tool that gives the true pattern. A fork works and is what most home cooks outside the region use. The bread is genuinely regional: Samarkand non is thick-rimmed and dense, Bukhara's is thinner, and the Tajik and Uyghur versions differ again. Lamb tail fat, dumba, is the traditional enrichment and gives a savour nothing else quite matches. Butter is the practical substitute. Do not skip the milk. Water-only doughs give a drier bread that goes stale within a day.

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