With eating healthy, gluten-free food being all the rage these days, self baking bread for everyday use has become extremely popular. Not everyone has time to make their own bread, however. That’s where these home bakers come in with their innovative and delicious breads that are also extremely healthy. Here are five creative breads and the five innovators who bake them:
Five seeds bread
“Nothing beats the pleasure of having fresh bread for breakfast”. This baking enthusiast is ever ready to experiment with her bread, and also tries various combinations to along with it.
Her signature bread is the five seeds bread that comprises of flax seed, sunflower seeds, melon, sesame and nigella seeds. All known for their highly fibrous content, these breads can also be had as a lovely snack. These are the basic country loaf and contains 20% home milled flour from heirloom whole wheat. Her sun dried tomatoes and mixed herb bread is also a huge favourite among her clients, who always keep coming back for more.
Elevating the health quotient in the city, Samrudhi bakes healthy breads and teaches many baking enthusiasts in the city a few baking hacks. She exhibits her love for baking on her facebook page Krumbkrafts. She uses a sourdough base and wild yeast that has greater nutritional value than the others available in the market. She also travels around and conducts workshops, “I really enjoy spreading my knowledge of baking, especially using sour dough and coming up with innovative ideas with my clients” says the home baker.
Samrudhi Bhat-Nayak: 9448745153
Focaccia bread with a Kerala touch
Rjashri is helping people to enjoy the best of both worlds with her innovative Focaccia bread with a few flavours from the south. Originally, Focaccia is a flat oven-baked Italian bread product similar in style and texture to pizza doughs. This favourite European bread has been rightly experimented with flavours and added coconut scrapings to give it a slight Kerala blend.
Her facebook page ‘All that’s Baked” has clients from all over the city requesting for more. This home baker never fails to impress us with her innovative blends of the original wheat loaf bread with a few desi spices and flavours. Her bread rolls with paneer makkhini is a huge hit as well as her stuffed garlic bread and the tutti fruity bread rolls. Her apple cinnamon bread with cream cheese glaze and herbed garlic pull apart bread are meant for your sweet and savory cravings!
This baker is all ears to any ideas by her clients and willing to customise according to their choice. She is also known for her creamless, eggless and fondantless cakes that are wonderful in taste and healthier in nature. Rjashri has been surely spreading smiles across the city with her fruit cakes and other tasty snacks.
Rajashri Manoj: 9342441775
Focaccia bread
Smitha Hemadri is a vegan home baker who is spreading hope among all the vegans in the city. Her breads completely baked with the help of vegetable oils and coconut milk. Her signature bread is the Focaccia bread that is completely prepared from organic ingredients and tries to maintain the authenticity of this European bread. She uses only virgin olive oil and herbs such as rosemary and thyme, to enhance the flavours of this rich gluten free bread. These are usually thin breads and can also be enjoyed as an afternoon snack.
This software professional, who runs Smitha’s Cake Hive, also prepares thin herb breads and other gluten free breads, when she isn’t busy shuttling between work and family. Gluten free breads with millets and betel leaves and Spinach breads are also few of her specialty breads. This baker prepares according to the requirements and customises on basis of order. This lovely vegan baker is also known for her biscuits and cakes.
Smitha Hemadri: 9945563255
God’s own Nuts and Seed bread
Chaitali Raizada of Taantraa Organic Handbaking was the first in Bangalore to start baking gluten-free bread seven years ago. Today, she is most famous for her ‘God’s own Nuts and Seed bread’ made from an assortment of nuts and seeds: almonds, hazlenuts, sunflower seeds, chia, flax and whole oats. “Eating just two slices of this bread with a side, like sabji, will make you so full, you won’t feel like eating anything for a long time,” she says.
The bread is made entirely of nuts and seeds and is held together by psyllium husk which, Chaitali says, is highly nutritious. The baked goods at Taantra are completely vegan and organic. For the breads, Chaitali avoids maida and opts for almond flour, which she says is healthier. This suger-free bread, which contains jaggery as sweetener, is a healthy option for all.
Apart from the nuts and seeds bread, Chaitali is also popular for her sweet potato bread and her plain almond flour bread. Though these are her most common bakes, she encourages customers to ask for innovative customised bread. “Anything can go into bread and taste good,” she says.
Breads are not the only baked goods you will find in Taantra. Their cakes, nut butters and ‘magick bars’ are also extremely popular.
Chaitali Raizada: 9731244600
Coffee Bread
The Gluten-free Bread Boutique is the brain child of Shwetha Muthanna, who offers innovative and customisable breads, one of which is her coffee bread. Shwetha, hailing from Coorg, grows her own coffee and uses it in her bread. Made without wheat or maida, the bread is made using alternative flour like water chestnut, raw banana or coconut flour. “Usually, when people make use coffee in bakes, they make it sweet, with coffee cakes or coffee bread. I wanted to do something different so I decided to make a savoury coffee bread and my customers seem to love it. It tastes exactly like a cup of coffee,” Shwetha says. She also uses self-harvested wild yeast, made from a natural fermented mixture rice flour and water. This slightly bitter loaf also has additions of seed sometimes, on customer request.
Shwetha’s coffee bread is definitely one of its kind but her customers also enjoy her plain sandwich bread, seed loaf, banana bread and her detox-charcoal bread. Most of her breads, however, are tailor-made according to the consumers’ needs. Or like Shwetha puts it: “No two loaves are alike because everyone wants something different.”
Apart from breads, The Gluten-free Bread Boutique also sells cakes, pancake and waffle mixes, gluten-free atta and probiotics like kombucha tea and kefir milk for the health conscious.
Shwetha Muthanna: 9845869109
