Of pastries and new passions

Two new hobbies – baking and yoga – have beckoned Linoy Seidman, wife of  Dy Consul General of Israel to South India, ever since the family moved to Bengaluru in 2018
Of pastries and new passions

BENGALURU:  As a child, Linoy Seidman remembers being “amazed” by special birthday cakes, and used to stop by bakeries on her way home from school, just to look at the window display. While she enjoyed baking special cakes for friends and family while growing up, she never really had time to take her hobby seriously. It was when she moved to India with her family – her husband Ariel Seidman is the Deputy Consul General of Israel to South India – that she found time on hand to pursue her otherwise weekend hobby.

An accountant by profession with a masters from Bar Ilan University, Israel, Seidman worked in different positions related to finance for 17 years, with her last stint being at an industrial company. as the CFO. “When I moved here in 2018 for my husband’s job, I was not working for the first time, and had free time to take my hobby seriously. So I really perfected techniques of working with various ingredients, cake wrapping, jelly injecting, decorations and more,” says Seidman (38), who feels India is what made her take baking one step ahead.

The move also opened doors to another interest – yoga. Never having visited the country before, Seidman had imagined India as the city of Delhi: a big metro, hot weather, spicy food, pollution, women in sarees and yoga everywhere. “I found the last two to be true. Before we moved here, I wanted to know Bangalore better. So I came here without my family for a few days. That’s when I found yoga, which became my new passion,” says Seidman, who will be finishing a master course in it very soon.

Her day usually starts early with an hour of yoga practice,  and a few times a week, Seidman goes out for a run at GKVK, Cubbon Park or around the Dollar’s Colony neighbourhood. “It’s an old hobby, which I feel goes alongside with my yoga practice,” says Seidman, who home schools her daughters, Lia (7) and 
Emma (3).

Since Seidman bakes as a hobby, and not business, this gives her the chance to “try, fail and try again.” Requests usually start with an idea or request from friends – “something light with flowers” or “very chocolaty with a princess”. “It’s about finding the right combinations of ingredients and flavours, and putting it together. As I rarely make the same cake twice, it’s a combination of art and baking,” says Seidman. In the past few years, she has also started watching YouTube videos of bakers and chocolatiers and started trying to make “more sophisticated” products. Fancy cakes, praline, and cookies have come off the oven with her taking several workshops to perfect different techniques.

But the biggest challenge she finds is baking gluten-free sweets that no one can tell are any different. “My daughter has a celiac disease so our house is all gluten-free. As this is not very common in India, I find that I have to bring a lot of ingredients from Israel and other countries in Europe or the US. However, when it comes to flours, India actually has a lot to offer in the gluten-free area, as a lot of millets and different kinds of dal can easily be found,” she says, adding, “I always need to find substitutes for maida, and this usually means mixing various kinds of flour (millet, rice, buckwheat, quinoa, potato, dal, corn, teff, oat and more) to get the balance that will give the right flavour, texture and smell. This balance won’t be the same for different products (such as cake and puri). Finding the right combination for every product is a huge task.”To check out her work, visit @sweetart_linoy on Instagram

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