🇮🇳 India · Family: Pav & Pao · Region: Maharashtra/India · Heat: Baked · Bread: pav
Ingredients
The Pav is the soft, slightly sweet bread roll of Maharashtra and much of India, a Portuguese-descended loaf that arrived through Goa and is now the default carrier under a whole class of street food. As a bread it is defined by its softness and its faint sweetness. The crumb is pillowy and tearable, the crust thin and pale, and the rolls are baked joined in a slab so they pull apart with a soft torn edge rather than a cut one. That tender, mildly sweet body is what makes it a foil for the spiced, savory, often fiery things it carries.
The make is a soft enriched yeasted dough. Wheat flour, water, yeast, a little sugar and fat are worked into a slack, well-risen dough, divided into small portions set close together in a tray so they prove into each other, and baked until just gold on top while staying soft and white inside. The shared walls between rolls stay pale and tender, which is why a pav is torn apart rather than sliced. In use it is almost always split and griddled: cut most of the way through, opened, and toasted face-down on a hot tava with butter until the cut sides are crisp and the inside stays soft. Good execution shows in a roll that is even and light with a fine soft crumb, a top that is set but not hard, and a griddled face that crisps and takes on butter without drying the interior. Sloppy versions show up as a dense or gummy crumb, a hard overbaked crust that fights the soft fillings, or a roll toasted so long it goes stiff all the way through.
Its whole identity is as a base. Split and stuffed with a fried potato dumpling and chutney it becomes vada pav; torn and dunked alongside a spiced mashed-vegetable gravy it becomes the bread for pav bhaji; it carries spiced patties and bhaji of every kind. Each of those built dishes deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. Variations of the roll itself are mostly size and richness, from a lean street roll to a softer buttery bake. What stays constant is the function: a soft, faintly sweet, tear-apart roll engineered to be split, griddled, and loaded with something spiced.
More from this family
Other Pav & Pao sandwiches in India:
