Ten Flatbreads and Pancakes, Ten Stories

Osaka’s records say that around Shōwa 8 (1933), there was a dish called ‘yōshoku-yaki’ — flour thinned with water, poured onto a griddle and topped with dried sakura shrimp, scallion, bonito flake, and aonori. In Shōwa 14 (1939), this dish is recorded as having been renamed ‘okonomiyaki’ and changed into today’s form, in which egg, shrimp, cabbage, and other ingredients are mixed in beforehand.

As an older lineage, ‘funoyaki’ — served by tea masters at tea gatherings in the Azuchi-Momoyama period — is sometimes mentioned, but food-history researchers themselves have noted the caveat that this was a sweet confection spread with miso and sugar, distant from today’s okonomiyaki in both cooking method and character. ‘Monjayaki,’ born in the penny-candy shops of downtown Tokyo, is also sometimes introduced as one strand of this lineage.

In Hiroshima, today’s Hiroshima style is said to have developed by replacing the scallion of issen yōshoku with cabbage and adding noodles. The Osaka style and the Hiroshima style are not in an original-versus-descendant relationship; they are two lines of development that branched from the same issen yōshoku.

Around the same time, other dishes that cooked water-thinned flour on a griddle stood side by side in Osaka. Takoyaki was one of them, named in 1935 after the filling of the street-stall dish ‘radio-yaki’ was changed to octopus. On how that came about, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ account of regional cuisine records only the sequence within Osaka and does not mention akashiyaki, while Aizuya — said to be the shop where it began — and the Akashi side each tell a different story of influence from akashiyaki; the sources do not agree. On the griddle there were things spread flat, and things rounded into spheres in a hollow.

In 2017, UNESCO inscribed the ‘Art of Neapolitan “Pizzaiuolo”’ on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. What was recognized was the process of preparing the dough and baking it in a wood-fired oven, together with the physical skill by which the craftsman spins the dough — not the dish of pizza, nor any specific recipe. The inscription came on Italy’s application, and the skill is handed down through a system of apprenticeship, from master craftsmen to trainees.

What is said to be the oldest record of the word ‘pizza’ is a notarial document from southern Italy dated to 997 CE, according to one account — though the original document itself has not been confirmed. The combination of tomato, mozzarella, and basil is said to already appear in a work published in 1853.

The form close to today’s pizza is said to have taken shape from the 16th century onward, a period that overlaps with tomato’s arrival in the Mediterranean from the New World.

In 2010, UNESCO inscribed ‘Traditional Mexican cuisine’ on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. What was recognized was the entire food system built on corn, beans, and chili, including crop-rotation farming, the technique known as nixtamalization, and tools such as the grinding stone. It was not the tortilla alone, as a single dish, that was recognized.

Nixtamalization is the technique of treating corn with an alkaline solution of lime or wood-ash lye, and the leading theory holds that it developed along Mesoamerica’s Pacific coast sometime between 1200 and 1500 BCE. This processing converts the niacin in corn into a form the body can more readily absorb. In regions where corn crossed the sea without this technique traveling alongside it, disease from niacin deficiency is recorded as having been widespread. The technique’s failure to travel with the grain left its cost in distant lands.

The flour tortilla is said to have emerged from the 16th century onward, under Spanish rule. In the dry northern lands where corn struggled to grow, a wheat-based lineage developed on its own. This is not an inferior offshoot of the corn lineage, but a parallel lineage that grew out of the conditions of the land.

In 2014, UNESCO inscribed ‘Lavash’ on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, on Armenia’s application. The record documents several women working together to knead the dough and press it onto the inner wall of a clay oven, and the ritual of placing lavash on the shoulders of the bride and groom at a wedding.

In 2016, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey jointly applied and inscribed the flatbread culture itself on the list, under the name ‘Flatbread making and sharing culture: Lavash, Katyrma, Jupka, Yufka.’ Armenia was not part of this joint inscription.

The 2014 inscription decision states explicitly that ‘inscription on the Representative List does not imply exclusive ownership.’ The international body itself states that even a registration by a single country does not mean the exclusive cultural attribution of the practice. As for where it originated, an Armenian theory, an Iranian theory, and a broader theory pointing to all of West Asia stand side by side, and no scholarly consensus has settled the question.

The word ‘dosa’ is said to derive from the Tamil ‘thosai,’ and is introduced as already appearing in classical Tamil literature composed around the turn of the millennium into the 1st century CE. This is a record that the name existed — not a record of how it was made.

The oldest record that can be confirmed as a concrete method of preparation appears in a 12th-century encyclopedic work said to have been written by a South Indian king. It sets down two methods — one using rice and chickpeas, the other rice and black lentils — and is said to also mention the addition of spices. The record of the name and the record of the method are two pieces of evidence of a different nature.

Opinion is also divided on where it originated. The widely accepted theory points to Udupi in Karnataka, but some researchers, citing classical Tamil literature, hold Tamil Nadu to be the origin. Neither side has been settled. The thin, crisp style known worldwide today is said to have spread once Udupi-style restaurants moved into Delhi in the 1930s.

A cooking pot believed to have been used to prepare injera and stew has been excavated and dated to around 600 CE. This is a record grounded in an excavated artifact, and ranks among the most reliable of injera’s candidate dates. The record of teff, the grain itself, is said to reach back to 3350 BCE, but this is a record of the grain — not a record of injera as a dish. The two need to be considered separately.

The batter is made from teff flour and water, left to ferment naturally over several days. The countless small holes left behind as fermentation gas escapes give this batter its distinctive look. Only one side is cooked; it is never flipped.

The cultivation of teff and the culture of injera span both the Ethiopian highlands and Eritrea. Eritrea has a history of political union with Ethiopia up until 1993, and this food culture does not belong to either country alone.

It is said that, during the Joseon dynasty, it was one of the refined dishes served to welcome guests, but no document giving a specific year has been confirmed. As for Dongnae pajeon, the Busan specialty, one telling has it as a tribute offered to the king, and another as a snack eaten by the people who worked on building the town’s fortress in the early 18th century — but both are oral traditions, and no primary-source confirmation has been found for either.

In Korea, the custom of pairing pajeon with cloudy rice wine on rainy days is widely told. Two explanations are passed down side by side — that the sound of oil pan-frying resembles the sound of rain, and that on days when rain kept people from working the fields, spending the time over cheap flour food and home-brewed alcohol became a settled habit — but both are folk explanations, not established scholarly fact.

The Japanese name ‘chijimi’ is said to derive not from standard Korean (buchimgae, or jeon) but from a regional dialect spoken in areas including Busan.

Buckwheat’s place of origin is said to be northern China, and the leading theory holds that it reached Europe by way of Russia around the 14th century — but buckwheat pollen believed to date to the 12th century has also been detected in Brittany’s peat bogs, and sources do not agree on the route or the timing. The documentary record in Brittany appears in a Rennes register from 1497, and two years later, in 1499, a word denoting galette-type dishes appears in a trilingual Breton–French–Latin dictionary. The former is a record of buckwheat as a grain; the latter is a record of the dish and its vocabulary — and the two are treated separately.

The reason buckwheat took root in this land differs from Japan’s soba-giri, which developed as a noodle. It is said to have been chosen by the circumstances of land and economy — it grew even in poor, acidic soil, matured quickly, and at the time was not subject to grain tax. The same plant turned, in Japan, toward the technique of cutting it into strands, and here, toward the technique of spreading it thin and cooking it flat.

Making it from nothing but buckwheat flour, water, and salt is the tradition of upland Brittany; a sweet batter with egg and sugar added is instead made from wheat flour, and is called, separately, a ‘crêpe.’ Locally, the custom of pairing it not with wine or beer but with sparkling apple cider is said to be well established.

In 2024, UNESCO inscribed ‘Breakfast culture in Malaysia’ on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Roti canai is one of the dishes this inscription names as representative. What was recognized is the morning mealtime itself, carried by people of multiple ethnic communities.

This dough is said to trace back to a layered bread brought over by Tamil Muslim immigrants, who were brought from South India in the 19th century to work on rubber plantations and railway construction. Through the waves of immigration from the 1880s to the 1930s, it is said to have spread first through Penang and Malacca. As for the origin of the name, there are two theories — one tracing it to the name of the port town it sailed from, the other to a Malay word describing the motion of stretching the dough — and neither has become the settled account.

The layers come not from fermentation, but from the manual technique of repeatedly coating the dough in oil and folding it. The motion of swinging this dough through the air to stretch it has also become a showpiece at street stalls.

A court-menu record said to have been compiled in the early 17th century contains a description of a dish called ‘Kotoroma.’ Its content amounts to a mixture of coarsely ground flour, honey, egg, and butter, and it is considered among the oldest records within the history of blini.

There is a view that the ‘meaning’ attached to this dish is most likely a later interpretation added by 19th-century folklorists, and this needs to be considered separately from the record of the dish itself. The festival held in the week before Lent, Maslenitsa, is itself well established as historical fact, and the custom of enjoying meals centered on blini during this period is deeply rooted.

The grain used is said to have varied by region and household — buckwheat, wheat, rye, millet, barley, oats — and this is not a dish whose single point of origin can be pinned down. The method considered most traditional is the one that uses buckwheat flour, leavened with yeast.