The world’s best bread has been revealed – and one country is on a roll

I once spent seven days in France, where I ate nothing but crusty bread with salted butter — and it was one of the best weeks of my life.

Bread connects us, fuels us (and from time to time, makes us cripplingly constipated), so it goes without saying, that any list that ranks the world’s best breads is one we should take extremely seriously.

And according to the gurus at Taste Atlas, there is, a clear winner: garlic butter naan.

Rated an impressive 4.7 by the experts, this traditional Indian flatbread beat out the likes of focaccia, ciabatta, tiger bread, and roti to snag the top spot, proving that the simple combination of butter and garlic should never be underestimated.

In fact, India features four times in the top 10 list, with amritsari kulcha (2nd), naan (7th) and parotta (5th) also placing highly. That’s four of the best kinds of bread in the entire world coming from one country.

But we have a sneaky suspicion this choice is going to cause a stir.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the French baguette, a food as synonymous with the French identity as the Eiffel Tower and a beret, only reached number 14 in the list.

Let’s not forget, it’s often cited that six billion baguettes are baked in France every single year.

This is a loaf so beloved it’s been given UNESCO Heritage status, and President Emmanuel Macron has even claimed it to be ‘envied around the world’.

There’s even an annual competition, the Grand Prix de la Baguette, which crowns Paris’ best baguette. The winner gets €4,000 becomes the official supplier to the Élysée Palace for a year.

Even the classic New York bagel, a staple at both 5am and 5pm, only placed at number 73.

Bagels can actually be traced back to Poland, brought to the Big Apple by immigrants in the late 19th century (there are also no Polish breads on the list).

Tourists can go on bagel tours when visiting the city, and McDonald’s in the USA even offer bagel breakfast sandwiches.

Plus, we reckon everyone’s favourite New Yorker, Sarah Jessica Parker, might have something to say about this list.

She even has a regular bagel order, which she revealed to be ‘toasted with Kerrygold butter wall to wall, and I added Grey Poupon mustard and four slices of Boar’s Head salami.’

The art of making a naan bread

Everyone knows Brits love a curry, after all, our unofficial national dish of is a chicken tikka masala. But we often don’t sit down and properly appreciate the technicality and precision that goes in to making this food so spectacular.

Traditionally cooked in a clay oven, naan is made by combining flour, yeast, yogurt, water, salt, and oil in a bowl till it forms a dough.

You then knead the dough until it’s smooth and elastic, allow it to rest, and then divide the dough and shape it into small balls, then flatten into a teardrop shape.

Naan is the perfect combination of soft and chewy — perfectly seasoned and impeccably suitable for different flavoured fillings. Some people are partial to a Peshwari naan, filled with coconut and sultanas. Others are more Keema naan people – stuffed with spiced minced meat.

Whatever your preference, there’s a naan for you.

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