Homemade whole wheat bread: nirvana for the soul

Ever since I started cooking seriously around 3/4 years ago, I was told that if I can make bread at home in my LG microwave-convection oven, I would be considered as a good cook. The people who told me this included a few of my 'know-it-all' friends (who by the way cannot boil an egg, even with instructions), a semi serious individual who specialises in French cooking and a few sundry souls.

I read Mark Bittman's no knead whole wheat bread and wondered if I could manage to ever make that crusty, porous bread that they say can be made if you have magic in your soul or a french baker's daughter for a wife! Bread making has intimidated me. I would look at recipies and curse every one of them that demanded me to have patience for a couple of hours.

I had attempted bread a few times at home, it never ever worked. Each time I was left with a leaden mass of dough that could be outsourced to rioters world over to throw at the establishment.

This time was different.

The ingredients:

Whole wheat flour : 1 - 1/2 standard measure cups ( use any atta, I used Ashirwad ) plus 1/4th cup for dusting
Yeast : 1 tablespoon
Salt: 1/2 teaspoon or to taste
Sugar: 1 teaspoon
Dry herb mix : 4 tablespoon ( I used a mix of Oregano, rosemary, pinch of thyme, chilli flakes, dry coriander leaves, dry garlic flakes)
Olive oil : as required ( I used about 1/4 the standard measure cup / use virgin and not pomace)
Water: 1 standard measure cup / as required ( half room temperature and half lukewarm)
Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with a smidgen of milk
Sesame seeds: 1 teaspoon - or as per need
You will need a large flat bottomed vessel for the dough, a moist clean kitchen towel and a brush. Also a oiled cake tin or a bread tin.

Time required, including baking time: approximately 90 mins

Preparing the yeast: This is where it seems people make a mistake. Take a cup of luke warm water (water thats hots will kill the yeast, and water thats tepid will not allow those organisms to bubble, so lukewarm it should be. Test it by pouring a bit in the back of your hand, if it burns, its hot, it, ideally should be comfortable warm). Now dissolve half the sugar in this lukewarm water and then add the yeast into this mix. Cover with a lid and let it rest. The yeast will form a pasty mix, give it a stir after 2-3 minutes and then leave it alone for 10 mins)

Prepare the dough: mix the salt, remaining sugar and the herb mix throughly. In ten minutes your yeast mix would have started to form a nice bubble layer or a forthy layer on the top surface. Add this to the dough and get to work with your hands. Gather the flour and keep kneading, there is no speacial way to do this, when the dough starts to come together, add water in little spashes, keep kneading till it becomes a sticky mix. If it is too watery, please use the spare flour to give it some dryness. At this stage you will have sticky dough on your fingers, do not try to remove them or wash your hands. Now add olive oil and start to use the fleshly part of your palm to push the dough and stretch it from one end to the other while in the vessel itself. The oil will incorporate into the dough and the stretching will ensure that the gluten breaks down and gives the dough the elasticity (ok, I read this up). Use up all the oil, it helps. You will notice that the dough that stuck to your fingers now have vanished into the dough. Turn the cup that contained the olive oil onto the cake / bread tin and use it to oil the bottom of the tin well and then sprinkle flour on the bottom.

Knead the dough to a nice round ball and leave it to reast for 45 mins while covered by the moist towel (moist is not wet!). The yeast will get to work and will make the dough double in size in 45 minutes. Use the time to play with your kids, they will love you for it or your dog. Or just read the newspaper, dont go peeking at the dough every five minutes, the yeast will not work faster because you are in a hurry. After 45 minutes, take a good look. The dough will look like a bloated ball. Gather all your hatred for whovere deserves and punch the dough to release the air inside. Now quickly knead it once again for about 5 minutes and let it rest again for 15 minutes.

Preheat the over to 200 degrees cel. Pop the dough in the cake tin / bread tin and brush the top with the egg wash. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top and use a sharp knife to cut shashes into the top of the bread dough. Put it in the preheated over and bake it for 20/25 minutes. The bread will puff up and the egg wash will turn golden brown. At the end of the 20 minutes / 25 minutes you can test the bread, it will give out a hollow sound if you knock it with a spoon. Now let it cool on the kitchen top while you prepare the tomato salsa or the roasted almond basil pesto that would go with it.

Your kitchen and if you like in a Mumbai flat, the entire flat will have the fragrance of heaven. When the bread at room temperature cut it with a serrated knife or just tear it into chunks and eat it. No bread ever made will taste the same after this.

My bread was eaten within 10 minutes of serving by four people - 3 adults and one 5 1/5 year old. This little girl asked me in all seriousness, can we start a bakery at home?

I am not sure if it was the best bread that money could buy, I have not eaten enough good quality bread to know. The closest it came to in flavour was the bread that we sometimes buy from Nature's Basket and a couple of times from the BBC at Juhu Marriot. In terms of achievement, for me it was a glory moment, I could bake a decent bread, at home, using home ingredients. I had the dry herbs because I have been buying them for my Saturday / Sunday cooking, but you can experiment with fresh herbs like finely chopped onions and coriander, you can also try using a bit of garam masala to give it that Indian flavour. You can use butter or cooking oil instead of olive oil. When you add fresh herbs, please reduce the quantity of water used.

Hope you are proud of your bread when you take it out of the oven. You will feel liberated and will have attained that Buddha inside you!

Two Status Messages about startups

Ramanath Bhat, someone I met during a business meeting and Senior Manager Google TV Project at Sony this morning posted the following as his Facebook status:

"I think one of the toughest adjustments to make, particularly if you are coming from an established company, is entering a world where you have infinite needs from people around you, and no one needs you. That predicament in some ways defines the challenge of a startup. You have an idea, but no leverage, so you have to start making water into wine. You have to attract a team, attract money, attract customers etc. with nothing more than your vision and powers of communication. Entrepreneurs who succeed are those who don't get demoralized by that asymmetry, but instead view it as a challenge. Occasionally, someone hits on an idea that is just so brilliant or timely that it quickly creates leverage, but that's rare."

-- Tim-Westergren Founder of Pandora on moving from Big company to Start up 

I posted it in turn on my Facebook page later in the day with acknowledgements to Ramnath and to Tim-Westergren, adding that the same is applicable to someone who has to move from a startup to an large organisation. The corporate mavens are not kind to startup entrepreuners who move back and the road blocks are many. This post is not about this issue. 

 Pranay Srinivasan responded with a passionate comment and says:

There is more to this as well. Sometimes, as an Entrepreneur, you end up being a lone negotiator, who's cajoling his own troops to work for close to no money for long hours to attempt to succeed at pleasing completely unyielding customers who think they are doing you a favour by passing business to a relatively unproven vendor. You have to build relationships by destroying your ego, your self-image and come across as humble, but not needy; enthusiastic but not aggressive; foreceful but not arrogant; ambitious but not reckless; you have to find the money to sustain your vendors, your overhead and manage your growth while ensuring you dont create white elephants. You have to forge long term business links with clients based on your flexibility and your superior quality at rates which are lower than that they already pay. You have to make sure you dont compromise on payment terms or else you might end up in a cash crunch. And at the end of it all, no matter what your bank balance or your fears are that keep you awake at night or make you wake up suddenly in a cold sweat, you have to remember to Always Keep Smiling. 

Maybe the ones who are in the midst of this startup dream are fools. Or maybe the ones like me who gave up and decided to play it safe are the smart ones. One thing is for sure, there are no easy answers.

History for her

A couple of days ago I logged into spanfish.in and uploaded the 160+ pictures that I had taken of my daughter over the last 2000 odd days since she was born. I spent around 2 hours agonising over what I wanted to do with the pics, which were not really high resolution and hence not printable as photographs for an album.

I finally decided to order a photobook, paid Rs 750 inclusive of taxes and handling and waited quite excited. Yesterday I recieved the photobook. I had managed to arrange the photos in a manner where they started with her earlier ones and ended with the ones which are the latest. The low res ones are now postage stamp sized. These pics include one of the crow that (atleast Tamara believes ) comes home and crows for her everyday.

I gave it to Tamara last evening and since then she has been looking at the photos and making me tell her stories about each one of them. Stories about how the photo was taken, where, why, with whom, what was she doing? did she really do this? do that? its been an endless stream of events, which I imagine she re-lives in her little head.

I probably will now collect every photograph of the family and get them printed and keep them as family heirlooms for the next generation. They need to know the history of their family and there has to be a family story teller who narrates these stories.

I suppose this is how it was before this incredible invention that captures light and a moment in infinite flowing time was discovered. I think now that the frescoes of Ajanta, Elephanta, Aborginal prints of Australia are all pictures that were created to allow some father somewhere to tell stories to his next generation.

Unfortunately - I have very few pics of my growing up years. It was expensive then to get them printed, and cameras were so few that it was considered a luxury. One of these days I have to go to the family home in Pune (yes I am a Malayali who does not have an ancestral home in Kerala, but a family home in Pune) and go through my Dad's papers. I am sure there will be a treasure trove of history in there. The last time I went through these papers, I found a huge stack of old pictures of Dad's days as a labour union leader in Pune. The ones with George Fernandes, Madhu Dandavate and Datta Samant are the ones I treasure. I have to sit my mom down and get her version of this history written down. I started writing a fictionalised version of my parents life in Parayil House - somehow it has remained an incomplete work, maybe its not time yet.

Coming back to my daughter and her photobook, for her, the last 5 years are mysterious, she remembers little things from her brief life and reaffirms them by referring to the photos. I think it is the best gift one can give a child - a treasure of stories that go beyond Enid Blyton and Chota Bheem.

learning to drive a truck

My dad and maternal uncle tried their best to teach me cycling. Look straight ahead they said, keep handle straight and hold it like you hold a pencil they hollered. They gave up! my death grip on the handle bar caused me to lose balance and in those 3 months mom had to endure me and my numerous scratched, scraped, knees. Then one day, I managed to prop the cycle next to a rock and clamber on to the seat and then pedalled furiously, i was flying. Sure the first time I fly straight into a ditch and the next time into a handcart, I did survive and learn to ride a cycle, a beautiful BSA SLR. Yes the very same one that Kapil Dev borrowed from a kid my age to reach the stadium in the comic strip ad that appeared in Indrajal Comics. (to date i never learnt the monkey kick style of cycle riding or the push and hop on the seat style, my bad!)

I graduated to a scooter and then to a kawasaki bajaj 100 cc bike. It was always a breeze. Then we bought a second hand Maruti 800, and one had to unlearn the cycle / motobike art of riding and learn to sense and measure the 4 corners of the car. Until I had to drive a truck once. To date I do not have the guts to drive something bigger than a hatchback, I have tried and suffered all kind of cars. I think I have the mortal fear of killing someone. With a small car, its easier, you are the master, the lone rider, ranger, etc etc. The bigger the vehicle gets, the larger gets the risk which extends beyond me.

Whats the purpose of writing all of the above? Answer: working for a corporate is like driving that truck which I tried long ago.

You are not alone, your decisions are not your own, the accidents are not caused by you alone. So when you drive a truck you have to aware of the 4 extended corners of the vehicle, that you cannot really see. You have to use the gut, but get approvals for that gut feel, of whether you can turn, or cut lanes. (when on Haryana roads, this rule does not apply :p )

And you have to let go. Use that light hand that dad spoke of, that light hand that makes fluffy cakes.

Ten months and learning.

A book and winged victory

Been reading 'The Good Muslim' by Tahmima Anam, a Bangladeshi writer who is now a global citizen. The writing reminds me of reading a screenplay. I am at page no 75 as of this morning and I went through the fragrance of a pineapple field, a river and its fertile delta and a mango tree. And the common idiom that India shares with her neighbours.

Imagine the stories that are never told because they are not written in English. Of the books that are never going to get read because they were written in a language that is not common. Thank lord for writers in English who bring the local grit, mud, sand to the books they write in English, while keeping the taste of the country intact. This also brings me to that great subcontinent question: why are we divided if we share so much of history and habits.

And now at the fag end of a day filled with agitation, I stumble on this link : The Louvre Less Travelled. I have done this walk, seeked out the oddities in the Louvre while the masses went and gawked at the popular legends. It was done over two days, the first spent in understanding where we were and what we did and the second in seeking out these gems. If you ask specifically at the information centre, they will give you a list of these treasures.

It is a pleasure to be doing something other than thankless work.

Measuring Childhood per square feet

There are hoarding all over Mumbai and one assumes print campaigns in Times on India that asks "what is the carpet area of childhood?". The images are fantastic, neo modern painting with children playing, reading and having fun. While the other builders spoke of the gyms, airconditioned lobbies and spectacular highrises, Rustomjee Builders speaks of childhood, targetting the soft underbelly of parents who have children who are young and need that space to run around. Interesting!

Now what was the carpet area of my childhood? The first few years were spent in a village called Wagholi, around 25 kms outside Pune city in a hospital campus where my mom was deputed as part of her rural training program. The campus was sprawling, with stone buildings that had wooden slatted windows. My playmates were the children of the hospital staff and dad on weekly basis took me to the panchayat office ( am not sure what he was doing there) to watch Doordarshan Mumbai's news bulletin. The news reader was Pradip - i forget his surname, reading the current news at 7 30 from a inland letter. There used to be a huge tract of land just behind the hospital and that was our play ground. A group of 10-12 children and two dogs used to chase dragon flies, play cricket and turn into a dark shade of brick brown in the hot summer sun.

Then it was the Dr Ambedkar Colony at Deccan College in the cantonment areas of Pune. A semi private bungalow with a garden that had a huge jamun tree in its midst and two dozen odd guava and mango trees. I built my first tree house here, my first outdoor tent and had a zoo according to my mother. A koel, a mynah, a rabbit, a dog and a cat were my pets. After school one could vanish up the branches of the guava trees and read as many comics as one wanted.  Star Trek started on Doordarshan around the time and most of us would spend all our evenings pretending to search for aliens. It was a childhood of climbing trees, falling down, eating jamuns till the mouth turned purple and sour, making mango chutney and getting all the boys and girls together to cook a meal over open fire in the evening.

Dad was asked to move closer to his place of work, when TELCO Pimpri had labour problems from 1982 onwards. That was when we shifted to a "flat", 1200 sq ft of nothingness, stacked one on top of another, all 4 floors of them and all 350 buildings. We had moved upwards into a 'complex' with shops, markets and access to transport, school in the complex etc etc. But no playground!

My daughter who is 5 now thinks that the little amount of space we have around our building in Andheri West, when not covered by cars of the residents is her playground. There are trees but she does not want to climb them. She has been told by her friends that their moms have told them that if they climb trees, they would fall down and break their bones. Cannot argue with that.

So then, how do you measure the carpet area of childhood. Most likely answer is Rs 16500 per square feet at the Rustomjee property in Malad, or Rs 22000 per square feet at the JVPD one. Not a childhood 90% of parents can give their children. Not at that cost.

I can see ghosts...

I am on the other side now. I work for a large global organisation and almost everyday meet atleast two startups who pitch for the business ( imagines or otherwise ) that we can give them. Having been on the side of running a startup, raising money, pitching a concept, managing starvation and creating a viable business, I can imagine the eagerness of the guys to prove themselves. And I can see through the shallowness of the concepts. I wonder why there are no mentors who can guide these entrepreuners through the stage where they are fodder for corporates.  I was told once that outside DAKC, the Reliance ADAG headquarters are deadbodies of startups that perished trying to service Relaince ADAG's demands. Am sure if I look carefully we would also have a few skeletons outside out gates.

And honestly most of the companies that I have see do not solve any big problem, they are either derivatives of existing ideas, waiting for just enough mass so that they can find a buyer (prefer google, but facebook will do). It is painful to have to go through shoddy presentations, fake accents and fake stories and get to the core of the ideas.

Am yet to see a great idea that can change the game, something that can make me cry out with joy. Instead I can see ghosts, tired ones, like stale jokers who have lost their mojo. Cottage industries that will get consumed by either the greed of people like me or screwed by investors.

Yesterday, on way to the company, had an idea - can I get 500 people to invest Rs 2000 - the cost of a good dinner in Mumbai, which we can invest in a noble idea like Nurture Talent ( www.nurturetalent.com) that educates startups or in a venture that is exceptional - I do not know what exceptional is as of now, but am sure like love and death, one will know when one is close.

I want to explore the opportunity in water, in waste management and education. In visual display of information. In a micro funding model for artisans. And not take more than 5% equity in the company for the Rs 1000000 that would get invested using the crowdsource model.

Would you help me?