Like coffee, tea or dates, sharing bread has been elemental to the region’s hospitality traditions for millennia
The word “non” comes from Persian, where it is sometimes transliterated “na’an” or just “naan.” Throughout the region, the word refers to a variety of wheat-flour, leavened flatbreads with the slightly smoky sourdough tastes and textures that are the result of being cooked in large clay (tandoor) ovens.
Each of the 12 provinces of Uzbekistan produces its own range of bread sorts. For instance, Samarkand Non is of medium size, thick and heavy, with smooth, glossy sides and a small patch in the centre covered with black sesame seeds.Tashkent is famous for its ‘airy’ non, with crispy, light ‘bubbles’.
There are many other sorts of bread, such as simple bread, bread with crackling, bread with meat, bread from bran, puffy bread, flaky bread, bread fried in oil with onion and so on. In every city and town, at a market, you can see long rows of various kinds of bread decoratively disposed on the stalls.
Uzbek bread is made of simple or fat dough, sometimes with the addition of milk, sour cream, eggs and even herbs. Usually, it is baked in a tandir oven (traditional Central Asian clay oven; also spelled tandyr, tandoor), however, there are some sorts that are made in different ways.
Usually, only men are involved in baking traditional bread. It is very interesting to see how the bread is made in the bakery. To make the process easier and more rapid, each person is engaged in a certain type of activity: one makes balls of dough, another forms loaves from these balls and provides them with twisted ornament on the sides and a pattern of holes in the centre with the help of a chakich, a special pestle with sharp teeth, while the third dives into the heated oven, sticks the bread to the wall of the tandir and comes out for the next loaf.
The Uzbek bread is sometimes used as a plate, to serve fruit or meat and is often decorated with inscriptions and coloured sesame seeds.
