THURSDAY, MAY 09, 2024
Alvarinho J Luis
For a variety of reasons, bread has been a mainstay of human diet since the Neolithic period, some 10,000 years ago. It’s not just delicious (nothing beats buttered toast), but it’s also cheap and filling. Egyptians produced gluten-rich bread called Eish baladi about 5,000 years ago by pounding wheat and making dough that was baked on hot stones.
Countries made their own varieties of bread. The Persians created a windmill technology for milling grains about 600 BC, while the first stone-ground corn tortillas were made in Mexico around 100 BC. Chemicals were added to bread in the twentieth century, making it whiter, softer, and with a longer shelf life. Modern bread is created by using a variety of flours, including wheat and rye, leavened with yeast to make it fluffy, and baked in a variety of ways. Bread comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, from the French baguette and Polish challah to Ethiopian injera, Jewish matzo to Goan pao.
Bread is a gift from God, as it was when Moses fed his people in the desert with manna from heaven, and when bread became the body of Christ at the Last Supper. From Genesis through Revelation, bread is mentioned at least 492 times, with various meanings and symbolism. Christians use bread in the Eucharist celebration, which brings our souls to life and offers a road to salvation.
The art of bread making is a legacy passed on to the Goans by the Portuguese who brought along cashew, chilli and potato. For making a scrumptious pao, the dough has to be fermented. As yeast was not available, the Portuguese chose coconut toddy, which was plentiful at the time. Pão is traditionally baked in centuries-old way, wood-fired hole-in-the-wall mud ovens or khorns in Konkani, which gives it its characteristic texture and deliciously smoked flavour and aroma. Due to the difficulties in obtaining toddy and its rising price, the bakers use yeast. Due to escalating wood prices, electric ovens replaced wood-fired mud ovens.
Goa is known as the bread eaters’ paradise because of the availability of a variety of breads. The square-shaped, soft and chewy pao, the round-shaped, coarse-crumb and crispy undo, the distinctive butterfly-shaped katre pao (scissored bread), the bangle-shaped hard kakonn, and the hollow poee dusted with wheat bran. There are two types of poee: unddeachi poee (husk poee) and godd (sweet poee).
Poder (corrupted from Portuguese word Padeiro) is the guy who delivers the pao to your door step or sells the bread from the bakery/Padaria. In my childhood the poder would walk around the village with a cane basket on his head selling bread. Now he rides a bicycle with a blue tarpaulin-covered cane basket behind him and honks to alert people to his presence.
There were 1200 traditional families that were proficient in bread-making, originally hailing from the Catholic population in south Goa. Every village had its own bakery. Baking was a family tradition with skills and recipes passed down through the generations over the centuries. Unfortunately, for last many years, the market is flooded with low-quality bread produced through short-cuts by migrant workforce who has taken over this trade. High price of raw materials, high establishment cost, shortage of skilled labourers and competition from modern supermarket chains have forced 20-25% of Padaria to shutdown.
Goa is one of the few states in India where bread plays a central part in a meal. Pão is Goans’ preferred snacks, from breakfast to dinner, from cutlet pal to chouris pao, from bhaji pal to chutney paozin. Pão is one of Goa’s cultural identities because of the symbiotic relationship that Goans have with this simple baked delight.
