India, May 31 -- Dhruv Oberoi, Executive Chef of Olive Bar & Kitchen in New Delhi, is making a kulcha. It started yesterday - a biga of flour, water, honey, and barely a whisper of yeast, mixed without kneading and left overnight at 18degC. Today, he'll build a second dough around it, stretch and fold it over two to three hours, then bake it at 250degC until it leopard-spots. It will be topped with duck leg rendered in its own fat, finished with kasuri methi and plum aachar. It is an extraordinary amount of effort for a flatbread.

The flour he is using is not a specialist bread flour. It is Khapli atta - the same ancient Emmer wheat that has been grown in Karnataka and Maharashtra for thousands of years, the same grain that sat in Indian...