Bread-making at home is still new to most Indians. A look at the cookbook, Crumbs! Bread Stories and Recipes for the Indian Kitchen by Saee Koranne-Khandekar, will take you through a host of easy to make home-based recipes. Vaishali Dar speaks to the author about the craft of baking and her journey as a bread maker
Are you an average yeast-fearing, dough-despairing home cookIJ Worry no more. A hands-on class about baking breads would give novice baker a newfound passion and help you make your own loaf of bread at home. Food writer, consultant, blogger and a passionate lover of culture and culinary history, Saee Koranne-Khandekar brings her debut cookbook for Indians to bake their own bread. As she simply puts it, “It’s got a bit of technical gyaan, lots of narratives on my memories with bread and snippets from baking course in college.”
Khandekar’s earliest memories of homemade bread are of her great grand aunt, Radha Kaku, baking chewy loaves that were drooled over. “I’ve always been fond of bread, baking, and writing about food. Having said that, it would also be fair to say that as a teacher of bread making, I realised that people are more and more interested in bread making now but there wasn’t any book to handhold you through the process in the Indian context of available ingredients and climactic conditions. So, the timing seemed perfect!”
The book is a rendition of step-by-step recipes for making variety of breads, Indian flours and their strengths, dotted with personal anecdotes from her childhood, stories about Irani cafés in Mumbai, the basic essentials of bread making, and vivid illustrations apart from some real food photography. “As a blogger, I have always done all the writing and photography so the book should also have photographs styled and shot in my home studio.”
The process and technique help one understand the behaviour of ingredients like yeast – from kneading and shaping to proofing and baking and explore Indian alternatives to international recipes. “All the existing bread cookbooks in India were related to paranthas and rotis and none had recipes for a croissant. My aim in this book is to try and demystify yeast and fancy terms such as bread flour so that bread making can be brought into everyday kitchen,” she feels. The best part about the book is that you find appropriate ingredients listed in the book easily available in an Indian kitchen. For example, lavash of Turkish origin is an unleavened flat bread to wrap meats in. An Indianised recipe containing whole wheat flour with ragi flour yields a nuttier flavoursome cracker that serves as an excellent accompaniment to cheese platters.
The author thinks she’s attracted to baking for a few reasons. The first is all about aesthetics. She loves making things look beautiful and finds baking to be therapeutic. “A value associated with anything that has the capability to give you a sense of being lost in it. I have a suspicion that my husband finds Excel therapeutic. Baking or cooking in general, (perhaps like gardening) seem to be popular favourites because of the sensory overload they offer — textures, aromas, colours — in just a short recipe, your entire body feels like it has taken a walk in the garden,” she says. Baking is often associated with comfort food. Moreover, that garden seems to be a garden of memories — because food, after all, is an emotion, and if it can evoke memories of the comfort of childhood or an evening of love, it is therapeutic!
Apart from the physical element to baking — kneading the dough or cutting out cookie shapes, there is also a strong creative component. “Well, thanks to the Internet, there is inspiration everywhere. But when it comes to bread baking in particular, I think one needs to look around and gather inspiration from one’s surrounding. The deep purple-pink-brown of ground ragi flour could inspire one to use it in combination with chocolate for a decadent yet healthy and very attractive loaf of bread. Or one could use the beautifully shaped sorrel leaves as a stencil when dusting the loaf with flour to create a beautiful pattern upon being baked. So yes, it is fun— you just have to keep your eyes and your mind open and take the plunge.”
Khandekar likes to play many roles. From curating menus to taking baking classes, she has even forayed into entrepreneurship to carve a niche for herself. When she’s not playing harrowed mom to her three children she keeps busy conducting food experiments in her kitchen, thus balancing work and family life.