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Flatbread is the oldest and by far the most widespread bread family. It needs no tin, no long rise, and no enclosed oven — a hot stone, a griddle, a clay wall, or the side of a pan will do — which is why nearly every grain-growing culture has one and why so many of them are still daily food rather than speciality baking. bread-world-table catalogues them by region; this page covers what they have in common.
Part of Baking.
Leavened, unleavened, and fermented
- Unleavened — roti, chapati, matzo, tortilla, and the Algerian and Moroccan semolina breads made with nothing but semolina, oil, salt and water
- Yeast-leavened — naan, barbari, bazlama, pita, focaccia
- Naturally fermented — injera from teff, kisra from Sorghum, and the sour batters behind both
- Layered and enriched — paratha, msemen, and the folded pan-cooked breads that sit next door to laminated dough
Heat and the pocket
A pita puffs because the water in a thin dough flashes to steam faster than it can escape, forcing the two surfaces apart. The whole trick is a very hot surface and a dough thin enough to set before the steam vents — which is why flatbreads fail in a cool domestic oven and work on a preheated stone or a screaming-hot skillet.
- Tandoor, saj, comal, tava, and the domestic substitutes for each
- Griddle versus oven versus open flame — see ovens and heat and outdoor cooking
- Fried flatbreads: bhatura, puri, lángos, frybread — see doughnuts for the frying notes
Flours
Pizza
Pizza is a yeast-leavened flatbread that got an oven, and everything on this page about heat and thinness applies to it — a pizzeria oven at 800–900°F (425–480°C) is doing exactly what the tandoor and the saj do, and a domestic oven at half that is the compromise the home methods work around.
oven pizza is the landing page. The vessel splits it: pizza on the oven rack for a rigid or frozen crust, sheet pan pizza for the Sicilian and Detroit rectangles, pizza in a glass dish when the Pyrex is what you own, and Deep-Dish Pizza where the thing stops being a flatbread altogether.