Shotis Puri: Georgia's Iconic Bread (Home Oven Recipe)

Walk down any street in Tbilisi and you'll smell it before you see it — the warm, yeasty scent drifting from a small storefront where a baker leans into a deep clay well, sticking raw dough to walls that glow orange with heat. Minutes later, a golden, canoe-shaped loaf emerges, its crust blistered and slightly charred, its interior soft and steaming. This is shotis puri — the bread that defines Georgian eating. Every meal starts with it. Every table has it. And once you've eaten it fresh from a tone, supermarket bread will never feel the same.

Bread in Georgia Is Not a Side Dish

In most Western countries, bread accompanies the meal. In Georgia, bread is the meal's foundation. The Georgian word for bread — puri (პური) — is practically sacred. There's a superstition that dropping bread on the floor brings bad luck. Throwing bread away is considered deeply disrespectful. When Georgians toast at a supra, they often tear bread rather than cut it, a gesture with roots older than anyone can trace.

This isn't performative respect — it's the residue of a country where bread was survival. Georgia's climate and terrain meant wheat was precious. The person who baked it earned genuine status. Even today, neighborhood tone bakeries function as informal social centers. You buy your loaf, exchange gossip with whoever's waiting, and carry it home still warm enough to melt butter.

The typical Georgian household doesn't stock bread for days. They buy it fresh, often twice a day — a morning loaf and an evening one. The idea of eating yesterday's bread when there's a bakery on the corner is mildly offensive.

Shotis Puri vs. Tonis Puri — What's the Difference?

Visitors get confused because Georgians use several bread names interchangeably — and even locals aren't always consistent. Here's the actual distinction:

The key takeaway: same dough, same oven, different shape. Shotis puri is the long one. Tonis puri is the round one. Both come from the tone. Both are extraordinary when fresh. Both taste like cardboard eight hours later.

Most Tbilisi bakeries make both shapes. The baker reads the room — families buying for a supra usually want shoti (it tears and shares more dramatically). A construction worker grabbing lunch wants tonis puri (easier to fold around cheese and herbs).

The Tone Oven: Georgia's 3,000-Year-Old Technology

The tone (თონე) is a deep, cylindrical clay oven sunk into the ground or built above it. Think of it as a Georgian cousin of the Indian tandoor — the words share the same ancient root. The oven tapers slightly toward the bottom, where a gas burner or (traditionally) wood fire heats the walls to extreme temperatures, often above 300°C (570°F).

Here's the part that amazes first-time visitors: the baker doesn't place the bread on anything. They stretch the dough into shape, drape it over a round cushion-like pad, lean into the oven's mouth, and slap the raw dough directly onto the scorching inner wall. The dough sticks. Gravity wants to pull it off. The baker's skill determines whether you get bread or a dough puddle in the fire below.

The bread bakes in 7–12 minutes, depending on size and heat. When it's done, the baker uses a long metal hook to peel each loaf off the wall. The bottom side — the one that faced the fire — has gorgeous, irregular char marks. The top is smooth, pale, and slightly pillowy where the dough puffed away from the wall.

Beyond Shoti: Other Georgian Breads

Georgia's bread culture goes deeper than most people realize. Each region has its own style:

Notice something? Half of Georgia's most famous dishes are bread-based. Khachapuri, lobiani, kubdari — they're all variations of "put something incredible inside dough." Georgia is, fundamentally, a bread civilization.

Ingredients

The beauty of Georgian bread is its simplicity. Four core ingredients, nothing fancy:

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Mix the Dough (5 minutes)

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water. Let it sit for 5 minutes — you should see some light foaming on the surface, which tells you the yeast is alive and ready. If nothing happens after 10 minutes, your yeast is dead. Get new yeast.

Add the flour, salt, and oil to a large bowl. Pour in the yeast water. Mix with a wooden spoon or your hand until a shaggy, rough dough forms. It doesn't need to be smooth at this stage — just get everything incorporated so there are no dry flour pockets.

Step 2: Knead (8–10 minutes)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead using the push-fold-turn technique: push the dough forward with the heel of your hand, fold it back over itself, rotate 90°, repeat. After 8–10 minutes of steady kneading, you should have a smooth, elastic ball that springs back when you poke it with a finger.

The dough should feel slightly tacky — like a Post-it note — but not sticky. If it's sticking to your hands, add a light dusting of flour. If it's stiff and hard to work, your water was probably too cold or you added too much flour. Georgian bakers want a soft, pliable dough because they need to stretch it into shape.

Step 3: First Rise (1–1.5 hours)

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn it once to coat all sides, and cover with a damp kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Leave it in a warm spot — ideally around 25–28°C (77–82°F). Near a warm oven, on top of the fridge, or inside a turned-off oven with just the light on all work.

Wait until the dough has roughly doubled in size. This takes 1 to 1.5 hours depending on your room temperature. Don't rush it, and don't punch it down aggressively — a gentle deflation is all you need.

Step 4: Preheat Your Oven (30 minutes before baking)

This is where home baking diverges from the tone. You need to simulate that intense, radiant heat as best you can. Crank your oven to the absolute maximum — 250–270°C (480–520°F). If you have a convection/fan setting, use it.

Place a baking stone, pizza steel, or heavy inverted baking sheet on the middle rack. It needs at least 30 minutes at full temperature to absorb enough heat. This preheated surface is what gives you anything close to a tone-baked crust.

Step 5: Shape the Loaves (3–4 minutes each)

Divide the dough into 3–4 equal pieces. Working with one piece at a time (keep the rest covered), shape each one:

1. Flatten the dough into a rough oval with your hands.
2. Stretch it lengthwise to about 35–40cm, keeping the center wider (12–15cm) and tapering both ends to points. You're making a canoe shape — a narrow boat, wider in the middle, pointed at each end.
3. The center should be about 1.5cm thick. The tapered ends can be thinner.
4. Poke the center of the loaf with your fingertips 6–8 times. This creates small dimples that prevent the middle from puffing up like a balloon. Traditional shotis puri has puffy edges but a flatter center — the dimples make that happen.

Step 6: Bake (10–14 minutes)

Transfer the shaped loaves to the preheated stone. The easiest method: shape on parchment paper, then slide the parchment directly onto the stone. Or use a well-floured wooden pizza peel.

Bake for 10–14 minutes. You're looking for deep golden color with some darker spots — even a few small charred patches. If your oven runs cool, push it to 14 minutes. If it's a powerhouse, check at 10.

For extra crust char (mimicking the tone effect), switch to the broiler for the last 1–2 minutes. Watch it like a hawk — it goes from golden to burnt in 30 seconds.

Step 7: Cool and Serve

Transfer to a wire rack. Let it cool for just 5 minutes — enough that you won't burn your mouth, but not so long that you lose the magic of warm bread. Shotis puri is at its absolute peak within the first hour of baking. After 4–5 hours, it starts to dry out and stiffen. By the next day, it's toast material.

Making It Work Without a Tone

Let's be honest: you cannot perfectly replicate tone-baked bread in a home oven. The tone operates at 300°C+ with radiant heat from all sides, and the dough bakes while stuck to a vertical wall. Your oven heats from below (or above), maxes out around 250–270°C, and bakes on a horizontal surface. The physics are fundamentally different.

But you can get surprisingly close. Here's what matters most:

A pizza steel is the single best investment if you bake bread regularly. It transfers heat to the dough faster than a stone and gives you that snappy, blistered bottom crust. A thick baking stone is a solid second choice. An inverted heavy baking sheet is the budget option — it works, just not quite as well.

How Georgians Eat Their Bread

Georgian bread is never sliced. It's torn. At the supra, the host tears the first piece. Everyone else follows. Here's how it actually gets used at a typical meal:

Common Mistakes

Frequently Asked Questions