[kaltura-widget wid="5ipwcptas4" width="400" height="365" type="whiteblue" addPermission="-1" editPermission="-1" /]Aug. 12, 2009 Tuesday

Afghans love their bread called, ‘doday’ (ړوړۍ ); in every meal I attended, they never missed it. Like most of the Asian countries, Afghans love rice, too, but not like doday. It seems that they serve doday in every meal. Rice is served once a day during lunch, but doday is never missed so far for all the meals I was invited to. Doday is sort of like pizza bread, only without tomato sauce or toppings; but it sure is very delicious itself.

Afghans use fingers instead of utensils to eat; however, doday is often dipped into stew or used to wrap rice or other side meals, like potatoes or meats, around. Once Dr. Rafi commented that the meal is just not the same with utensils. He prefers using his fingers over utensils.

They use all five fingers to gather rice and compress to make it somewhat like a hard ball which makes it easier to lift out of the plate. Then they use the thumb to push it in to the mouth. Over last 7 months, I got myself used to eating with my fingers as well. =)

I visited Asif, a baker, and video recorded him working. I always enjoyed his doday but never have seen him baking them. It was a small room with deep fire hole (stone oven) in the middle. Temperature outside is already 120 – 130 Fahrenheit, and he is working with fire all day long. Hew… it is too hot for me…

He had prepared bunch of dough made of floor before I arrived. (about 80-100 dough per meal) Then he quickly flattened it out to make it look like pizza bread. The next step was interesting; he slapped the dough on the inner wall of the stone oven and baked for couple minutes.

When he took out the freshly baked doday, I was very surprised how delicious it was. The cold doday was very good, too, but it was no comparison the ones just out of the oven. I wished my families and friends were here to taste the great doday, too. It was a very short visit (5 minutes), but was very fun and tasty!

Thanks Asif!!!