The Sean name was my Dad's idea and I thank him for it. He didn't want me to get ragged and bullied for having a long name like 'Apu Nahasapeemapetilon'.
Lots of breads have no salt --- Tuscan, for instance --- but I think most Indian breads do.
All breads have some kind of "flour" (which again is just any plant substance processed to make it easy to make a dough out of) and some water-based liquid.
Not all breads are baked! Lots of them are griddled, including several Indian breads that nobody is contesting the bread-y-ness of, and lots of cultures have fried breads (bannock bread for instance). I think the only commonality of bread cooking techniques is that they're all dry-heat cooked... but then you get to Chinese bao and you have to wonder about that too.
Like I said, Americans like things 'dumbed down', so anything and everthing that is round and made with dough is called "____ Bread"
Pita is obviously bread. Even your definition, which requires "baking in an oven", covers pita. If pita isn't bread, neither is naan --- at which point we've reached a pretty silly place of defining one of the world's most popular breads as "not bread".
I'm mostly with you as to bread (and certainly as to "pita is bread"), but I feel like noodles are generally not considered bread, despite being made from dough.
* They're often made from dough that is identical to bread dough (perhaps minus the leavening)
* They're cooked wet (which is why they don't leaven themselves) --- but then so are bagels and pretzels!
I'm guessing the reason will go back to the original purpose of bread, which was to create a portable, palatable, readily accessible foodstuff from grain. Without bread, the only straightforward way to eat grains is porridge. So bread can (and I think maybe always is?) eaten out of hand, and is cooked often well in advance of consumption.
I tend to think that they're not considered "bread" for two reasons:
- Their form factor is not appropriate for the concept "bread".
- They don't contain perceptible air bubbles.
Really, it's mainly the first one.
Two categories can be, um, vocabularily distinguished for pretty arbitrary reasons. Noodles are just a case of the same thing from a nutritional perspective leaving the prototype for the "bread" concept far enough behind that they're perceived differently.
You're going to have a tough time explaining tyropita.