Hot Crossed Buns; anyone?

For a country and culture that believes that bread is for bedridden patients, we have a whole lot of bakeries. I bet there isn’t a single main road in Bangalore that doesn’t have one. From the small, lack-lustre Iyengar bakery to the the suave Nilgiris and Sweet Chariot, bakeries have come a long way.

Just like the darshinis of the 90’s that metamorphosed Chinese food to suit the Indian palate by introducing everything from the original gobi to the latest mixed-vegetable Manchurian, bakeries have been inventing their own recipes for a long time now.

Black forest and pineapple pastries are common today, with every birthday party in town being celebrated with one, but some years ago it was unheard of. The best cakes then were the honey cakes, which didn’t have a drop of honey in them and plum cakes, which had everything but plum.

Pizzas and burgers were stuff in the Archie comics; what we did have were potato buns and vegetable puffs. Potato bun, a bun stuffed with a spicy potato-onion curry, complete with mustard and chana dal, made for a healthy snack option. That no one was bothered about calories and cholesterol then, is another matter.

And then, there were these triangular pies called dil-khush and man-pasand, both stuffed with tooty-fuity and desiccated coconut. I can’t quite tell why they had two different names, but they did live up to the names. How can I forget the cheapest cake - the apple cake, named so for no apparent reason and made from leftovers of the other cakes; a cake I relished for several years before I discovered the secret recipe.

Apart from these delicious and ingenious products that made bakeries irresistible for people and stray dogs alike, bakeries also made the standard breads. Not the whole grain, whole wheat and white bread that you get in the west; the ordinary, milk, fruit and sweet varieties. The ordinary for sandwich, the sweet for jam, fruit to have as is and milk on the doctor’s advice, for the sick kid, who’d rather starve than have it.

Posh bakeries have sprung up in several parts of the city today, but they are no competition to the neighbourhood bakery-behind-bus-stop.
These are places you rush to for a quick bite, in sickness and in health. On normal days and during curfews, when they sell milk and bread at exorbitant rates through half-closed shutters. Where the pale yellow banian clad guy assures you that everything you ordered is “Just made, fresh from oven madam”. Right. Fresh from the microwave oven stashed away inside. :)

Bakeries - we love them!