Ferment-nation: Yeast Favourite

Have you eaten probiotic bread? Yes, roti that's good for your gut. If you're wondering what this new phenomena is, read on.

Breads of India. Illustrated by Akansha Tyagi, Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

A few weeks ago, I was in Dharamkot in Himachal Pradesh hanging out with a few friends when one of them described her meal from the previous day — dal and probiotic bread. The latter intrigued me. Before I could brush it off as some new-age food fad, another friend pointed out that it was khamiri roti – the popular leavened bread from the northern part of India. This made me aware of the presence of fermentation in our everyday food.

‘Khamir’ is an Arabic word that refers to the sourness that develops in dough due to fermentation — in simpler terms, yeast. Khamir gives the roti its fluffiness and a slightly sour taste. The bread, it is believed, originated in Delhi during the Mughal period from where it spread to other parts of the country. The roti is cooked in a tandoor and typically eaten with qorma, nihari, and kababs. While the word “khamir” got attached to this specific bread, it is not limited to just khamiri roti. Khamir uthana (leavening) is a process that is followed in the making of other breads as well. For example, curd, salt, and sugar are added to flour and left to ferment for a few hours to make naan — a more popular South Asian bread that came to us from Persia. The word “naan” has been derived from “non”, the Persian word for bread. Bhatura, the deep-fried bread of North India, also follows the same fermentation process. Like naan, the dough for bhatura is left to rise by adding curd, salt, and sugar.

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Compared to baking sourdough bread, khamir uthana is similar to fermentolyse, where a sourdough starter is added to the dough. While curd is a common culture used in the north, a bread specific to the Pathare Prabhu community of Maharashtra uses a unique starter made with chana dal, potato peel, milk, and water. The ingredients are mixed together and left to ferment overnight. The fermented liquid, along with the foam that forms on top, is added to a batter made with maida, butter or ghee, honey, and salt. The batter is then poured into muffin trays and left to rise for a few hours before being baked. While baking, the batter gives off a strong smell, similar to the smell of ghee being made at home. But the end result is a soft and buttery pao (known as Parbhi pao, named after the community that makes it), which is usually paired with aamras. The pav is usually made in the summer in order to get the right amount of fermentation. The Pathare Prabhus are one of the original settlers of Mumbai. Being highly educated earned the community high-profile government jobs in the British government and close proximity to the British, which influenced their food. This is the reason why there are a lot of breads and pies in their cuisine.

Talking of fermentation and Mumbai, another fermented bread that comes to mind is the East Indian fugias. East Indians are the ethnoreligious Indian Christians who are also one of the original settlers of Mumbai. Fugias are fried breads served during weddings and other occasions. The bread is made with a mixture of maida, rice flour, coconut milk, sugar, egg, water, and yeast that is fermented overnight. The bread is deep-fried the next day into table tennis-sized balls and eaten with sorpotel or other meat curries.

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While the north got naan from Central Asia, Mumbai and Goa inherited pao/poi from the Portuguese. While the more popular pao has made itself familiar to most of the country, poi still remains local to Goa. The flour for this bread is fermented with yeast, salt, and sugar, rolled into flat disks, and coated with wheat bran before baking. The result is a soft round bread with a slight crunch on the crust. At street food stalls, poi is a big hit with omelets, cutlets, and Goan chorizo. They can be opened to make a pocket and stuffed with the choice of filling to make a sandwich.

In Jammu and Kashmir, an entire culture exists around bread. Tsot or girda (a round bread with a golden top and fingertip indentations), kulcha (bread the size of a palm, which is different from the Amritsari kulcha), lavasa (fluffy bread), tsochwor (the Kashmiri equivalent of bagels), roth (sweet bread topped with dry fruits), and loochi are some of the breads baked by the kandur, the traditional Kashmiri baker, each of them unique in their taste and texture. The mornings in the region begin with a visit to the local baker to pick up bread, which is then eaten with noon chai (the famous Kashmiri salted tea).

The pandemic may have given rise to the sourdough trend, but India has had its fair share of leavened breads for centuries.

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While it is impossible to cover everything in an essay, this five-part series is an attempt to highlight the culture of eating fermented foods in India.