Piki bread is sacred to the Hopi. The Hopi use Piki bread to celebrate special occasions and every-day meals. It starts with grinding blue cornmeal to a very fine powder and then mixed with culinary ash from burnt juniper trees. Both ingredients are then mixed with hot water to form a sticky substance. The mixture is then spread by hand on to a very hot stone; the bread bakes immediately into a parchment-like paper, dry enough to peel off the cooking stone. The thin parchment-like paper is then rolled into loaves about 8-9 inches long. Following are photos of the bread-making I captured at the Indian Fair and Market this past weekend.
Preparing the cooking stone for the batter.
Monitoring the fire while the parchment-like batter is baking.
Taking a break before baking the next batch of Piki bread.