These days, with the lockdown, many people have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. And that probably is helping drive this burst of enthusiasm,” says Sujit Sumitran, aka India’s bread whisperer, speaking about the spate of home bakers and amateur enthusiasts alike who have taken to baking sourdough bread at home with a vengeance.
Sourdough bread, that crusty tang-filled loaf of goodness, which already rules bakeries in the West, has been growing steadily in popularity in India. Requiring only flour and water, along with a generous dose of patience and care, the gluten-free bread is among the most popular ones today.
Goa-based Sumitran, who has been holding classes in his home state as well as the Capital and other cities for the last two years, was inundated with requests for more classes, and so decided to give succour to the masses with a free online tutorial, comprising in-depth modules for those wanting to bake their own sourdough. “With this tutorial I hope they can get all the information they need,” says Sumitran, judging that it can take up to five attempts to figure out how to get your bread just right.“People like to make stuff on their own, and this, being able to bake your own bread without any factory yeasts and commercial ingredients, using only flour and water to create a starter, which you can make breads and other stuff out of, is obviously appealing,” says Sumitran.
However, the process of making sourdough isn’t rocket science, as Sumitran notes. Before you can make sourdough bread, you need to make a sourdough starter. This is a slurry of flour and water to help cultivate wild yeast and develop all the friendly bacteria that help the bread rise and give it its characteristic tang. It takes up to a week to make the starter (don’t worry, it’s just 10 minutes of work every day). Once your starter is made, it’ll stay for as long as you keep “feeding” (adding flour and water) it regularly. Sumitran, for instance, was lucky enough to be sent some of the famous Bavarian “Black Death” starter, which dates back to 1633, and has birthed breads from that original starter for the past 400 years.And it’s not just about antiquity.
For Anya Sharma, 27, from New Delhi, who has Celiac’s disease, sourdough is a life-saver. “I was diagnosed several years ago, and for a long time had trouble finding gluten-free alternatives. Now, with the growing popularity of sourdough in the country it’s become much easier to find bread for my butter, as it were,” she says, adding that the lockdown put a kibosh on that. “It’s no longer as easily accessible so I decided to make my own. I saw several YouTube videos (and highly recommend Binging with Babish, which does a great version) and got started. It’s a long process, in that the fermentation takes up to a week, even if you only need five minutes a day to tend to your starter. Now that I’m stuck at home, I have the time to do it properly,” she adds.
On the other hand, Priyanka Hosangadi, 33, is sensitive to gluten, which she says isn’t as severe as it could be, but she prefers the slowly fermented, gluten-free sourdough whenever she can get it, as, “I’m very fond of tangy flavours, and so enjoy the tang of sourdough bread.”
Despite a busy Work From Home schedule, Hosangadi had the time to attempt baking sourdough in this lockdown. “I’d wanted to attend Sujit’s class for quite a while now, but something always came up. But now that I have this time at home, and can monitor the starter and feed it whenever it gets hungry so to speak, I decided to finally do it,” says Hosangadi, while noting, “My first starter didn’t work out because the heat here became very high, so I’ve taken that into consideration with my second starter, which is in its sixth day now, and coming along nicely so I hope to bake some bread this weekend.” Being a keen baker, she already had a digital weighing scale, and didn’t need to buy any special equipment for her adventures in sourdough, making do with a glass jar and a Tupperware container, or “Tupperware zindabad!” as she puts it.So, stop loafing around and let’s get started.
Sourdough in a nutshell
Sourdough bread, that crusty tang-filled loaf of goodness which already rules bakeries in the West, has been growing steadily in popularity in India. Requiring only flour and water, and a generous dose of patience, the gluten-free bread is among the most popular ones today.