Náng (馕) is the Uyghur tandoor bread, a round flatbread baked hard against the inside wall of a clay tonur oven and used throughout Xinjiang as both the everyday bread and the structural base for wrapped and scooped dishes. This entry looks at the náng from the angle of the oven that defines it: the tonur bake is what gives the bread its split personality, a scorched, blistered crust set against a chewier, slower-drying crumb, and that contrast is the whole reason it can serve as a wrapper for hot meat rather than collapsing the way a soft bread would.
The craft is the dough worked dry and the bread baked fast and hot. A stiff, low-water wheat dough is kneaded firm and rested so it relaxes enough to shape without springing back, then formed into rounds with a thick rim and a flatter middle that is docked all over with a dimpling tool so the center holds flat while the edge rises. Many bakers brush the surface and press in sesame or onion before the bake. The shaped round is slapped directly onto the searing inner wall of the tonur, where radiant clay heat fixes the crust in minutes: it comes out hard, freckled, and blistered outside, chewy and open within, the topping toasted into the face. Done well the crust is rigid enough to take a load without folding, the crumb stays chewy and holds for a day rather than going to dust by evening, and the flat docked center drinks fat and juice at the contact point without turning slack. Done poorly the failure modes are plain: pulled too soon, it is pale and gummy and stales fast; left too long, the crust burns and the crumb cracks dry; a slack or under-rested dough will not hold its rim and slumps under anything wet; an undocked center balloons and tears.
From there it shifts by how thick it is built, what tops it, and how it will be used. Thin, crisp rounds favor tearing and scooping; thick, bready ones are made to wrap grilled lamb and stand up to the grease. The sesame, onion, and plain finishes each pair differently with what they carry. Folded around charcoal kebab it becomes the grilled-meat-and-náng assembly, and sopped under big-plate chicken it becomes another dish entirely, each its own preparation that deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. What keeps náng a useful entry on its own is the tonur logic at its center: a fast, fierce clay-oven bake that yields a hard crust over a durable chewy crumb, the exact structure that lets a flat round work as a wrapper and a plate.