Who needs cake when there’s fresh bread???

Sure, dough can always be made in a food processor. But the tactile pleasure of sinking your fingers into sticky dough, squelching through the squishy mush, little knots and clumps clinging to your fingers and refusing to let go till the dough has finally had enough love… that’s just something else! Like Saee says, bread is an organic thing, and is always happier with human touch.

Then comes the kneading: pulling the dough with one hand and pushing outward with the other, coaxing out the elasticity of the gluten in a rhythmic motion… it is almost therapeutic. At the same time it’s quite a work out for your biceps and triceps, and completely worth it! When your dough has rested and doubled in size, it is so soft to touch, like a baby’s bottom (or like my Amamma’s soft arms!) And when you lift it up from one side, the dough has a nice jaali, or mesh of gluten fibers…

I’ve tried baking bread at home. My first attempt was a disaster: the dough didn’t rise at all, and when I tried to bake it anyway, it came out like a block of stone! I figured it was because I’d made the dough of only whole wheat. So I tried again, this time with half atta and half maida, and it worked! So I excitedly uploaded pictures of it on Facebook with the caption “I’ve got a bun in my oven”! (HAHAHA, That sure freaked some people out, especially my parents…!!!)

My first successful loaf

If you’re wondering why I’m talking about all this, I recently spent an entire day learning how to make delicious traditional breads from various countries, in a Master-Class taught by artisanal bread baker and food writer Saee Koranne-Khandekar.

All the breads we made had slightly different doughs. But the BIG difference was in the shapes of the breads, and I think every one of us in the class had the best time shaping the dough! Here are the breads I learned to make:

Stollen is a German Christmas bread, and much like Christmas cake, it is rich and full of soaked nuts and fruit. It has to be rolled flat and then rolled into a log with a little surprise filling of marzipan hiding in the center (and here’s a secret: we substituted marzipan with its closest local equivalent, the famous kaju katli).

Stollen: Before baking, and Baked, dusted with sugar

Focaccia is a really soft and delicious Italian flatbread, often encrusted with little gems of tomatoes, herbs, olives, etc. Ours had black olives and basil, but my all-time favorite is rosemary focaccia! The dough was really squishy and had to be pushed down into the tray with our knuckles in a process called dimpling.

Focaccia with olives tomatoes and basil

Fougasse is a French leaf-shaped bread made of firmer dough (it is said that traditionally, fougasse was hung outside the house as a talisman to ward off evil, after which the family members broke off pieces of it to eat!!) Once we made the dough, we had to roll it out in the shape of a leaf, and then make slits in it for the veins of the leaf. Gosh, it looked gorgeous!

The leaf shaped Fougasse

Mediterranean Pita is much like our roti, where little balls of dough have to be rolled out into circles. Once the bread puffs up, you can easily separate the two layers to make a pita pocket into which you can put various fillings.

Pita, the famous Med bread

Challah was the most fun. Traditionally eaten at a Jewish Sabbath dinner, it is a braided loaf, which turns out a beautiful golden when baked, thanks to the egg wash on top. I got super excited by the idea of braiding it, and Saee made it look so easy that I got carried away and tried a five stranded braid. Fail!! Tried a four stranded braid, and failed yet again! I finally settled for a simple two-strand wreath so that my dough wouldn’t dry out before I baked it.

Challah

Playing with all that dough took me back to one of my favorite childhood memories -- what my dad maps as the very beginning of my passion for cooking -- sitting on the kitchen floor playing with a little ball of roti atta, rolling it into snakes, pressing it flat, pinching faces into it and just generally mucking around endlessly till it dried out and lost its elasticity…

The bread-making class with Saee was such a joy. She is truly an expert artisanal bread baker: she knew her flour, yeast, ovens and overall bread behavior inside out. Not only that, she is also a great teacher: her explanations were so effortless, and clear of jargon -- she would throw in a Hindi word here and a descriptive sound there -- making it easy and relatable to us. “The word to remember with a focaccia is ‘pach-pach’” she’d say, describing the squelching sound focaccia dough should make, thanks to all the olive oil in it.

All in all, it was a fabulous day! The kitchen was drowning in aromas of olive oil, herbs and that warm, heavenly smell of freshly baked bread coming out of the oven… you know what I mean…

Can’t wait to get back to my oven in Bangalore!