Phulka is the everyday North Indian flatbread in its lightest form: a thin unleavened wheat round that puffs into a full balloon over an open flame. It is not a sandwich; it is the bread itself, the daily staple that gets torn and used to lift dal, vegetables, and curry at the home table. The angle that defines it is the puff. A phulka is judged almost entirely on whether it inflates fully, evenly, and reliably, because a clean puff means the dough was made and cooked correctly and produces the soft, layered, steam-separated interior the bread exists for.
The make is a three-stage skill on minimal equipment. Whole wheat flour is kneaded with water into a soft, smooth, well-rested dough, then a small ball is rolled into a thin, even circle with no thick rim or dry patches. It is cooked briefly on a hot dry tawa until the surface changes and small bubbles appear, flipped once, and then moved directly onto an open flame where, if everything was done right, trapped steam expands and the round balloons completely in a few seconds. It is pulled off, often smeared with a little ghee, and kept soft under a cloth. The result wanted is a fully puffed, supple round with light char freckles, no scorched flat spots, and an interior that has separated into two tender layers. Sloppy execution is easy to spot: rolled unevenly or too thick and it refuses to puff and stays dense, undercooked on the tawa and it tears or inflates only partly, left too long on the flame and it goes stiff and brittle, the opposite of what a phulka should be.
The distinction from related breads is precise. A roti or chapati is often thicker and cooked through on the griddle with light pressure rather than flame-puffed; a paratha is layered with fat and pan-fried; a tandoor-baked naan is leavened and a different bread entirely. Each of those deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. The phulka is the plainest and most exacting of them, the daily test of a cook's hand.