Our daily breads

Ratna Raman

A FRIEND brought me some delicious Scottish shortbread from England. Shortbread is a dense, vanilla-flavoured biscuit, made with butter and rather like a dessert. Being eggless, shortbread makes for great Navratri snacking and India could be a potential market. The Shrewsbury biscuit, made by Kayani bakery in Pune, is the closest imitation of shortbread, while nan-khatayis, made in hydrogenated fat are another Indian variant.

Desserts made out of maida range from pastries, cakes, tarts, eclairs, doughnuts and  crumble, but it is the   variety in readily available savoury breads that  take the prayer to God to  “give us this day our daily bread” to a whole new level.

Long back, everybody ate sliced white bread made by Britannia, Modern and local bakeries. Bakeries dotting the length and breadth of cosmopolitan India sold uncut loaves that provided the unique pleasure in tearing off small chunks which could be eaten by itself, toasted or with dollops of butter.

Large sweet buns with pumpkin fruit bits were also available, along with sliced fruit bread, and the occasional soupsticks and dinner rolls. There were also soft ‘croissants’ (French; cresent shaped) flaky, melt-in-the-mouth breakfast breads.

Nirulas introduced us to foot-longs which are now more familiar as ‘Subway bread’ and comprise of elongated sandwich buns. ‘Bagels’ are dense, hard,  bracelet sized,  bread rolls, made by boiling and baking kneaded and shaped wheat dough.

‘Brioche’ (French) is enriched bread, softened by the use of eggs and cream  unlike the ‘baguette’ (Latin; staff or stick) is a long narrow chewy French bread with a hard crust.  The ‘ciabatta’ (Italian; slipper) an oblong soft Italianbread with a crisp crust was inspired by baguette. ‘Foccasia’ is soft  Italian flatbread seasoned with herbs and topped with olive oil.

All the breads are made with maida and yeast, a microscopic fungus obtained from fermenting beer added to dough to enable it to rise. 

Caramelised bread that  was once sold as brown bread (from whole wheat flour) now  faces competition from breads to which millets, rye, ragi, jowar, barley, oats, corn, and dalia are added.

In India, whole wheat flour (aata) is used to make paranthas, chapatis and puris. Indian breads include stuffed paranthas filled with vegetables, lentils, paneer, egg and meat that are delicious and  nutritive , and  are made without leavening. ‘Baati’, a staple Rajasthani bread,  is made by boiling and baking whole wheat dough balls, subsequently drenched with ghee, rather like bagels.

Puffs or patties, made from sheets of pastry, are filled with vegetables, meat, cheese and mushrooms.  ‘Vols-au-vent’ (French; flights in the wind) are round puff pastry with savoury fillings, served as ‘hors d'oeuvres’ (French; appetisers) before a large meal.  Puffs, patties, kachoris and samosas do not require leavening. The Bombay ‘pavs’, now available nationwide, require leavening. 

 Kulchas, naans and deep-fried bhaturas (made with maida) and  deep-fried dolikirotis from Sind are traditional Indian breads that use fermented dough. Multiple hands from a multiplicity of cultures give us our daily bread.