Perhaps the most consistent with our idea of breads of India, the soft leavened pav is an important part of the famous street food pav bhaji. The pav looks similar to regular burger buns and uses the same ingredients. However, it uses a different baking method and has more yeast. The resultant bread has bigger holes and is softer. Also, the dough is placed more closely together on the baking tray, so that the pav clusters together in ladi, or slabs, and forms the typical ladi pav cluster of pav with a square base instead of the round bases of pav.
The story about how pav got its name remains an urban folklore. Some say it is because pav is served in bunches of four. That means one pav is one-fourth (pav means one-fourth in marathi). The second folklore is that because the bread needed more leavening, it was kneaded using feet (pav). The third story is that it is derived from the Portuguese word paozinho, which means buns. Here’s the recipe for pav.