The bakery does not have a name. “Just keep driving on the Alibaug-Rewas road that takes you from Mandwa jetty to Alibaug; About half way down after the railway crossing, but before Thal, there is a liquor store on the right and a dirty syntax tank on the left. Turn to Syntax Tank and take the little mud road leading to a small village, now follow your nose and try and find a bakery”. These are scattered and questionable instructions that were given to me by a painter and a friend, Brinda Miller, and enthusiastically endorsed by Shekhar Sawant, a former banker and now wayfarer. Brinda, Shekhar and I are Tuesday lunch companions. We meet in her studio, most Tuesdays at lunch, cooked by Brinda, thronged by Shekhar, or pot-luck by me. We try to invite one or two guests we may or may not have met, but can contribute a dish or two, and more importantly, sweeten the pot with some good conversation and knowledge. Do it. Knowing my propensity and weakness for good bread, both Brinda and Shekhar were told about this bakery in one. After about three failed attempts to find this place, mainly because of the ambiguity of directions, I found the bakery on my fourth attempt this weekend. I must say that it was the fragrance that guided me there more than the directions. It is a small village with a narrow winding and uphill road. The bakery is nothing but a big shed. The black walls are lined with logs of firewood. An old cot, with an old gentleman, on a land line outside the entrance, which looked like a deep yawning cave. He waves to us, and we breathe in the sweet, sweet smell of bread baking. This is my wonderland. Over two hot old-fashioned wood fires, dozens of metal trays with hot breads popped straight out of the oven. Our heads turn, our noses are up, our eyes close and we say to ourselves, “Oh my god – this smells good!” To me, it’s impossible to resist that aroma of sugars with amino acids, which form delicious golden and umber complexes that emit a variety of volatile aromatic compounds that float in the air. Clear, slightly sweet, yeasty air that smells warm somehow. With the permission of the gentleman on the cot, we broke some buns from the ‘ladi’, so hot that it was impossible to hold the roti. From outside, shining all over golden and lightly firm with butter that was brushed on surface, and inside soft, white, steaming and blistering. It was soon turning into a fluffy one, as we broke into some warm, sweet buns with raisins, then flaky light “Khari Biscuit”, crushable hard “Butter Biscuit”, milk toast, and other neat Stacked focused. , Freshly baked, crunchy, crunchy, savory, sweet, salty, salty tastes that emanated from sooty wood fires. That’s what I miss the most. Hot fresh bakery goods made by local bakeries.
I grew up in Mazgaon, Bombay, where in the 1960s, as in many areas of the city, a man on a bicycle, wearing a long beard, cap and checkered lungi, would come every day to sell hot bread. , sometimes twice a day. ‘Paw’. At the back of the bicycle, he held onto a large plastic-covered wooden box, which in turn was held behind by a giant rubber tube. This wooden box was filled with hot bread. It was typical South Mumbai pav. He’d pick up fresh bread from the local bakery, whose first shift started at around 3 p.m., and hawk it to his daily neighborhood beat twice a day. Even today you can see this lungi-clad cyclist selling roti in Hanging Gardens, Warden Road, Nana Chowk, Prabhadevi and sometimes Dadar in South Mumbai. Just as his father or his father had done before him. It’s a sight that to this day makes me run to the window and yell at him to stop.
There are usually two or three types of bread in that box. Regular soft “ladi loaf”, perhaps “sweet bun”, crispy “bran loaf” and often sliced bread, and some sort of freshly baked biscuits to add to the proceeds. Diversification means he can sell eggs as well.
Most of these bakeries have closed. Yes, some Irani still prevail, like City Bakery of Worli, which is the only bakery in Mumbai, I know, that makes big, oversized ‘brun pav’. About a foot in diameter, at about two in the afternoon, City Bakery Inn bakes a batch of crusty, giant loaves that are hard on the outside and soft with a wonderfully warm honeycomb inside. I’ll wait outside with a 250g pack of Amul Butter to get the hot brun out of their oven. Break it with my bare hands and eat it right there on the sidewalk and hit it with butter. Another largely anonymous bakery is behind Starbucks near Lilavati Hospital. Tucked into a small alleyway between two buildings, this soot wood bakery will reluctantly sell you a loaf of bread because their customers are the bakery itself. Pakeezah Bakery, near Mahim Dargah, turns out hot rotis every few hours. I often catch a batch of “ladi pav” at 7 pm. You can barely hold the bread in your bare hands as it sings to your palms though the newspaper it is wrapped in.
These bakeries are living on borrowed time. I am sure the ‘pav bhaji’ industry has given life to these bakeries, but for how long? Some will stand firm, some will bow down, and I will always mourn his passing.
Kunal Vijaykar is a food writer based in Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. What is the name of his youtube channel? The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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