Sorry Bea - was thinking about gardening and bread at the same time.
But although the bread doesn’t finish up concave coming out of the tandoor the oven itself is concave - it is the differential in temperatures that flattens it. I’ve come across the same phenomenon in North Africa.
But certainly it doesn’t have ridges or indentations and I can’t for the life of me see what the benefit of incisions would be. And as I said, although handkerchief bread is certainly made over ceramic kadais with incised bases, most is made over smooth ceramic, or more commonly metal, vessels.
A further thought for the potters - does the presence of incisions lower the breakage rate during firing?
kathryn
Katherine,
Your info on the Indian "handkerchief bread" is interesting - I hadn't previouly read that. I guess you are splitting hairs, I was trying to indicate than when the bread is removed from the tandoor it is soft and flat with no ridges or indentations - it is certainly not concave - but as you say, it does does cook the dough on both sides.
Bea
P.S. 'bed' I presume is meant to be "bread".
Another newcomer
Just a small correction in terms of modern flatbreads. Although the vast majority of modern flatbreads are made on a flat surface, the baking surface of the tandoor is actually concave - which means that the outer side is cooked on the stored heat of the tandoor walls while the inside is exposed to the slightly more intense heat coming from the fire so that the cooking speeds are balanced. But India also has its “handkerchief bread” tradition where a very thin bed is cooked on a convex surface with either a ceramic or metal bowl being inverted and heated from below over charcoal.
Although most kadais - the traditional Indian cooking bowl - are metal nowadays I have seen ceramic ones at roadside stalls in both Himalchaya Pradesh and Mewar and in Mewar, which is the only area where I’ve actually watched a local making handkerchief bread, some of the kadais have an incised base - although the one I saw was smooth
kathryn
To my mind, it's use for flatbread doesn't sound likely as traditionally this type of bread is baked on a flat surface, as it is today, on the walls of a tandoori type oven, or furnace of some kind.