Dish: Five Breads That Transcend Borders

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The first sentence of Bread, part of the classic Time-Life cookbook series, reads: “According to Hindu scriptures, ‘Everything is food, but bread is the great Mother.’” It’s one of the oldest forms of sustenance and an elemental part of eating around the globe. Whether it’s made with yeast or unleavened, braided or flat, eaten for breakfast or dessert, used as a utensil or a vehicle for toppings, bread unites us all in its nourishment.  

Here, we explore five breads from around the globe.

Bavarian Pretzels

In Germany, soft Bavarian pretzels are eaten throughout the day: for breakfast with sausages, cut horizontally and slathered with butter, as an on-the-go snack, or paired with beer in beer gardens year-round and especially during Oktoberfest. At Annelore’s German Bakery in downtown Cary, owners Norbert and Annelore Gstattenbauer bake traditional Bavarian pretzels. They explain that what makes Bavarian pretzels unique is that they’re dipped into a lye bath (which uses a small proportion of food-grade lye) before baking, which gives them a slightly tangy flavor, their trademark chestnut brown color, and their glossy crust. As is tradition, Annelore’s serves its version topped with coarse pretzel salt, but it also offers a cheese pretzel with a proprietary blend of cheeses baked on top.

Challah 

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the Jewish faith, you might recognize challah from brunch menus, where the braided, egg-enriched yeast bread is often used to make French toast. More traditionally, challah is consumed for Shabbat (or Sabbath), where every Friday evening, Jewish families prepare a special meal that includes three blessings, one recited over candles, one over wine, and one over challah. The challah is covered with a special decorative cloth during the first two blessings, then uncovered for the third. It’s up to each family to decide how to eat it, but it’s customary to tear off a piece and pass the loaf around the table. What the braids symbolize is also open to interpretation, depending on if it has three, four, or six strands, though it’s generally believed that because the braids look like arms intertwined, they symbolize love. Every Friday at the Levin JCC in Durham, a team of three bakers makes fresh challah by braiding two long strands that are then folded and crossed in the middle (so it looks like a four-strand braid)—to the tune of nearly three hundred loaves a week.

Injera 

In Ethiopia, it is common to eat with your hands, so injera, a spongy, porous flatbread, is used as a utensil. At Goorsha, an Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Durham, owners Fasil Tesfaye and Zewditu Zewdie spent six months perfecting their batter recipe, which is crafted from a mix of fermented teff (a native ancient grain that’s a staple in Ethiopian cuisine) and water, plus rice flour, which gives the bread more structure and helps tame bitterness from fermentation. Batter is poured onto a hot surface and quickly cooked into a thin, pancake-like consistency. Then the injera is rolled out onto a plate and topped with assorted salads, vegetable stews such as yellow chickpeas or red lentils, and tib (strips of meat). Rip off a piece from the outer edge to scoop, daub, and mop. It is customary to finish eating all the injera before a meal is complete—and at Goorsha, you can always ask for more.

Tortillas

Tortillas are a thin, unleavened flatbread made from ground maize that are common across South and Central America, where they’re topped with various fillings to make tacos, arepas, or pupusas, or eaten plain as a snack. Ex-Voto Cocina Nixtamal, opening in the forthcoming Durham Food Hall, will grind its own yellow, white, and blue corn from Mexico to make hot, fresh tortillas and tamales daily. The business, founded by Marshall Davis and chef Angela Salamanca of Raleigh’s Centro, takes its name from nixtamalization, the process of soaking, cooking, washing, and hulling corn (nixtamal is the end product). The nixtamal will then be ground with a little water in a custom-built molino, a huge grinder—Davis likens it to a Star Wars AT-AT walker with two big milling stones—that yields a corn dough called masa. The masa will be rolled into balls, pressed in a tortilla press, and quickly cooked on a plancha till puffy, destined for taco fillings such as smoked carnitas with pumpkin seeds and mole verde. Ex-Voto is also experimenting with creating a large, malleable corn tortilla, with the aim of recreating an Oaxacan dish of rolled tacos. 

Youtiao, also known as Chinese doughnuts, Chinese crullers, or Chinese oil sticks, are golden deep-fried bread sticks eaten throughout China and other East and Southeast Asian cultures. Katie and Justin Meddis, who own the East Asian-inspired eatery Rose’s Noodles, Dumplings & Sweets in Durham, discovered youtiao on their travels in China, where they are typically eaten at breakfast and dunked into warm, fresh soy milk. Youtiao’s neutral flavor—it’s made from flour, oil, milk, baking soda, and baking powder—lends itself to both sweet and savory applications. At Rose’s, the breakfast treat is served only on weekends, accompanied by fresh soy milk that can be ordered sweet, mixed with seasonal fruit compote (such as Pink Lady apples and candied yuzu rind), or savory, with pickled vegetables, chili oil, and cilantro. At MOFU Shoppe in downtown Raleigh, owner Sophia Woo dubs youtiao “Taiwanese churros” and gives them a starring turn on the dinner menu. Here, the fried batons are served in place of grilled bread for sopping up broth in a bowl of Thai green curry mussels, and for dessert with condensed milk and plum sugar.

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