Nothing, absolutely nothing beats the comfort of freshly baked white bread. Whether it is in the form of the local Mumbai ‘pav’ — a small square bun baked and sold, nine at a time in tiled loaf or the crusty ‘brun-pav’, usually a hard round roll of bread with a soft centre. Both are the breads of common man of Mumbai. Even for those who want sliced sandwich bread, traditional brands like Wibs and Britannia still serve the city with thousands of soft, sliced loaves every day that get picked up by homes, street vendors, canteens, hotels, restaurants and just about anyone who wants to eat bread, make toast or sandwiches. Fancier food shops and gourmet bakeries also sell freshly packaged sourdough loafs, multigrain, rye, gluten-free breads. But I have been seriously looking at a wheat-free diet. Now, it’s of no help that my love for bread supersedes my love for most other things in life.
Since I cannot absolutely give up bread, I have started looking for bread made without wheat, and, trust me, it is hard to find. Most bread available, whether made from Nachni, Ragi or other millets, all contain a certain amount of wheat. It’s nearly impossible to find absolutely wheat-free bread, and even if you do find something with seeds or husk or other undesirable ingredients, the bread tastes like dry, cardboard or worse sawdust.
But my pursuit to be able to keep eating bread with the least amount of wheat and the most taste continues. Along this quest, I have come across many bread makers, good, bad, tolerable, unbearable, sufferable, survivable and often downright unacceptable, at least to my white bread palate. But it’s offered me choices for breads that I would have a few years ago been unable to find.
Just to digress for a moment, traditionally, a baker’s dozen is not 12 loaves of bread, but 13. As the story goes, in medieval England, bakers who were found to be “cheating” their customers by overpricing undersized loaves were fined or even flogged. Just to make sure that they never came up short and hence punished, bakers started throwing in extra loaves for an order of a dozen breads. Hence, a baker’s dozen always had 13 or even 14 loaves.
Baker’s Dozen, who call themselves ‘India’s largest hand-crafted Artisan bakery brand’, has outlets around the city, and they make some pretty good healthy breads. They do a multigrain sliced bread and also loaf, with no Maida, enriched with sesame, flax, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. It is not a white bread but it’s quite nice especially if you zap it a low heat oven for 10 minutes. They also do a Ragi Loaf, but it’s a whole wheat bread with just a bit of Ragi in it.
I also discovered Ellipsis Bakery near my house in Prabhadevi, which also has a range of healthy breads. I often buy either their Sorghum Sourdough Bread with Garlic, or the Seeded Sourdough Bread both or the sliced crunchy bread all gluten-free. Now, to be honest, it takes a bit of doing to develop a taste for this kind of bread. But I have learned that if you have a strong hard cheese, like a sharp cheddar or a pecorino, on a slice of this bread when warmed up or toasted, it satisfies some of my bread cravings.
Baking at home has now become quite a thing, especially if you are experimenting with flours. Namrata, who lives in my cousin’s building, started sending me trial breads baked with banana flour a few years ago, and has now established quite a following for her breads. Under her brand ‘Kadhali’, which actually means ‘banana flour’, she now bakes breads keeping raw banana flour as her main ingredient, but with a variety of natural ancient flours such as jowar, buckwheat, almond, rajgira, oats, chickpeas, and quinoa. I often order her Pearl Millet Bread, which is made of Bajra and fortified with brown rice flour and Kadhali’s Whole Moong Bread made with whole moong and brown rice.
And finally, I discovered Gourmestan. This bakery, or delivery only bakery, bake some of the interesting gluten-free, vegan and yeast-free breads and cakes. Run by Shivani Sharma, who herself struggled with a gluten intolerance issue, discovered ways to fulfill her bread cravings and along the way created a whole line of tasty, yet organic, sustainable, vegan, fresh, gluten-free and healthy breads. Sourdough bread, pita bread, garlic bread, focaccia, bagels, ciabatta, almond pizza base, sorghum pita bread, sourdough millet bread, almond loaf, millet sourdough bread, sorghum sourdough bread and much more.
So, with all these innovations happening around me, I have to say, I can have my bread and eat it too.
Kunal Vijayakar is a food writer based in Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. His YouTube channel is called Khaane Mein Kya Hai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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