For Real, Bread Is the Best Thing Ever
For Real, Bread Is the Best Thing Ever
Bread in Kolkata
Cooking is a skill I acquired early in life, and I made whimsical use of my mom’s kitchen while still in school, much to her exasperation. Books on international cuisine weren’t easily accessible, and a couple of half-baked food shows on Indian national television were all I had. Hence, when I traveled and lived outside India, my love for various kinds of food and cuisines only deepened. The one ubiquitous item I totally and completely fell for was the bread. Not just the white ones, but all kinds of rustic and whole grain loaves: peasant breads, potato and rye, multigrain, whole wheat, sourdough, black Austrian breads, magical German breads, ciabatta and foccacia, French loaves, even little pretzels and cinnamon buns.
I was quite fond of the white-flour loaves and roadside pavs available at home in Kolkata, India. But now, my excitement knew no bounds. Much to my country folks’ disgust, I would eat breads slathered with butter, pate´, shrimp spread, avocado, honey, you name it, thrice a day. I would have them sandwiched, toasted, dipped in goulash, or scraping the sides of a pasta bowl. And I still wouldn’t have enough. I explored and was totally head over heels over the fantastic varieties of bread that came with their idiosyncratic typicalities from each region, each locale, and each kitchen. I was mystified by the ways one can create such a wide range of distinct flavors with the same set of ingredients.
I wanted to bake these goodies in my home kitchen. All my German and Hungarian friends baked their breads in their tiny kitchens as we did chapattis in ours. With a lot of enthusiasm, I started my bread baking. I bought books, read bakers’ blogs, watched tutorials on YouTube, and when these failed, tried sneaking inside a bakery as an apprentice.
No part of these exercises in baking was easy and no doubt, most of my bread baking drills ended in disappointments. The loaf wouldn’t look like a loaf or the baguette like a baguette, the braids of the challah wouldn’t come together, the crust would be golden but the inside would be soggy, or it would sound hollow when tapped but would be difficult to cut open.
I ran through troubleshooting tips in popular food blogs, bought myself a kitchen balance, an oven thermometer, and even stalked a respected baker. I fed my yeasts and hovered over my seed cultures, starters, and bigas for days and at inhuman hours, fought the darn leuconostoc with military vigor, and finally resigned myslef to the fact that bread baking, indeed, is rocket science and best left to the chemists.
Yet, soft and fluffy 100 percent whole wheat loaves sprinkled with sunflower seeds, or a pretty, no knead, Jewish bread kept haunting me. So I kept trying.
Until I broke a piece from the first-ever crisp, hollow sounding, handsome looking loaf that came out of my OTG (oven-toaster-grill) in my Indian kitchen, a couple of months back. The trick might have been hiding in that fresh yeast that I hunted out from an obscure market area in a second-tier Indian city. Or maybe the Indian-style buttermilk that I used with the dough. Hallelujah!
I was ecstatic and showed the loaves around to whomever bothered to glance, and then placed myself on the couch and relished warm pieces of it dipped in butter to my heart’s content. A few bites later, I realized three more minutes in the oven would have made it perfect. Nevertheless, divinely aromatic, home baked, healthy multigrain loaves are no more an elusive dream for me. I can bake them in my kitchen, anytime.