Khiva Tradition · Hand-Torn Tandoor Bread

Xorazm Non

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Bakers insist it must never be cut with a knife — only broken by hand and shared around the table, a custom common across Uzbek bread culture that Khiva's old-town bakeries still enforce strictly.

Khorezm's version of tandoor bread is baked thick and dense, its dough enriched with butter and sometimes milk before it's stamped with a pattern and pressed onto the tandoor's inner wall. Bakeries dot nearly every street of Khiva's old town, many run by the same families for decades.

Why it's made this way: The region's relative isolation west of the Kyzylkum desert let Khorezm's bakers develop their own dough and baking habits somewhat apart from the rest of the country, and the hand-breaking custom has stuck as local etiquette.

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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.