“The smell of good bread, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight,” wrote food writer MFK Fisher. Waxing eloquent about the most poetic of foods, she encapsulates the beauty that is homemade bread. I’m reminded of the pungent garlic aroma of a hearty Italian-herb, the batter of a sweet zucchini loaf that I was allowed to lick clean from the bowl. And Christmas time meant fruitcake in the way that only my mother could envision.
In Chennai, bread is ubiquitous, filling the pockets of roadside vendors and corporate officials alike. But tucked away from the blazing heat of commercial ovens lie slices with a certain untouchable warmth. Here are the five women behind the city’s most comforting loaves:
Pickle pull-apart bread
“I love to eat,” says Harini Sankarnarayan, founder of home baking venture, Flour Power. Her shrewd taste buds gave impetus to investigate further, and sessions with the vivid writing of author Enid Blyton had Sankarnarayan craving delicate scones and fluffy clotted cream, followed by one of Blyton’s signature midnight feasts. Toying with careers in hospitality, television, print media, and theatre, Sankarnarayan’s adventures in her kitchen led her to begin selling her goods only five years ago. Her affair with bread was even more recent, a product of her attempts to replicate the food she found missing back at home.
“It’s a challenge,” she says, referring to Chennai’s extreme climate and the lack of bread-worthy flour here. And yet, Sankarnarayan embraces the challenge with gusto. As we polish off her addictive pickle pull-apart bread and signature cinnamon rolls, she prepares the kitchen for her next order. “Bread is the true step-child of the pastry industry. I’d like to think I’m taking it under my wing.”
Harini Sankarnarayan: 9841428798
Giant cinnamon roll
When someone tells you they’ll be sending you a giant cinnamon roll, you take notice. And how can you not? Nine inches in diameter, it’s slightly daunting, and yet, it carries a heart-warming story of afternoons in the hills of Kodaikanal, sipping tea and popping loaves in and out of the oven. “It would fill the house with this smell that is so inherently nostalgic, that it’s brought me back to baking today,” says Samyuktha Vale. Beginning to sell homemade goods to her batch mates in college, Vale evolved the enterprise into Bake My Day just three years ago. She calls the metamorphosis “completely organic”, not too different from the goods that she sells to a group of hungry customers.
“I like to keep my products customisable, from the cakes that I focus on, to some of my newer breads,” Vale says. We prod a little further and she divulges a secret: her Bee Sting bread, a German brioche plump with pasty cream and adorned with honey-roasted almonds is her lesser-known favourite. But shhh. You didn’t hear it from us.
Samyuktha Vale: 9884695954
Plump focaccia
There’s something so inviting about focaccia. Studded with green olives, it breathes of garlic and oregano, kneaded in carefully by Divya Ninan-Eapen as she stands at her work table. “It’s my favourite part,” Eapen says, of the meticulous kneading process that she has perfected over the last 10 years in her Goan home, matching the aroma of the bakery next door. “I like to feel the dough that I am baking.” She adds that coaxing light and airy products that have built her a consumer base across the nation.
An integral part of the Home Bakers Guild, Eapen is constantly reinventing with her brand, Tangerines. Her savoury focaccias and sweet breads are in high demand as the rains approach. But between orders, she sneaks away to unearth a batch of delicate macarons, a rarity here in the city. “I try to customise, giving the people of Chennai what I hope they would like.”
Divya Ninan-Eapen: 9840121023
Pickled prawn bread
“I shouldn’t be baking… I really shouldn’t be baking.” The dialogue runs rampant in Linu Freddy’s mind today as she copes with a pesky frozen shoulder that has tested her mettle and her love for baking. And yet, she can’t stop whipping up batches of her banana-walnut loaf and a set of donuts to give to friends and family. “They’ve always supported and challenged me,” she says of the people that prompted her to open Linu’s Kitchen in 2011. Known for her plum cakes at Christmas time, Freddy says she constantly revisits the basics, brushing up her skills at the Artisans Institute of Baking, before venturing into more intricate pastry-making.
Only a year old in the world of bread, Freddy’s new innings are as much for herself as they are for her clients. “I’m a Malayali-Christian, so for me, the real indulgence is a pickled prawn bread that I make during Easter. It’s absolutely sinful,” she grins.
Linu Freddy: 9176245518
Glazed rolls
“You can bake as long as you keep the kitchen clean.” The words ring in Sara Koshy’s ears and she can still hear her mother’s voice, urging her to fill her Saturdays with baking in the kitchen of her childhood Singapore house. “It’s kept me in good stead,” she says of the hobby-turned-profession that began as early as her school days. She’d leaf through a rack of cookbooks, and while her literary mind had her venture into the world of publishing professionally, the smells of the glazed cinnamon rolls during Sunday brunch had her back in the kitchen with renewed vigour.
“It’s trial by fire,” she says of bread-making. Perfected at a time when the home baking industry hadn’t yet taken flight, Koshy is a Chennai favourite, hosting a blog titled Bake Tales that has dominated the blogging sphere in the city. She says by now, she can’t imagine doing anything else. “I’ll never leave baking and, I hope, it never leaves me.”
Sara Koshy: 8124145884
