Pretzels to rye bread to cheese varieties: Sultanpur bakery ready to serve delegates
The Brown Bread Bakery is used to taking orders from the German, Italian and Swiss embassies and their guests in New Delhi, apart from several hotels and cafes, but it is perhaps for the first time since it was set up in 2010 that it has witnessed such hectic activity.
4 min read
Cooks prepare pretzels at Brown Bread Bakery. Abhinav Saha The smell of freshly baked bread and cheese fills the room as 10 cooks race against the clock to make pretzels, German crust bread and an assortment of cheeses in a modest, two-room set-up nestled in South Delhi’s Sultanpur from where food will make its way to the German and Italian embassies, as well as the hotels where delegates from the two countries would be staying in, during the G20 Summit.
The Brown Bread Bakery is used to taking orders from the German, Italian and Swiss embassies and their guests in New Delhi, apart from several hotels and cafes, but it is perhaps for the first time since it was set up in 2010 that it has witnessed such hectic activity.
“Yes, we are getting a lot of orders,” says Michael Schmid, the owner, who comes from a family of bakers in Germany. The business was a result of his craving for food items from the country of his origin.“Though I enjoy staying in Delhi, I would miss German bread, coffee and cheese. We started a small bakery with a coffee shop in Delhi around 2010, in Paharganj.
The place specialises in bread sticks and cookies as well. Abhinav Saha
Soon, the German Embassy approached us. We then approached Swiss and Italian embassies and they have been giving us orders for their summer and Christmas feasts,” says Schmid, who came to India in 2004-05 to work with different NGOs.
A fourth-generation baker, he tells The Indian Express: “At my bakery in South Germany, we are known for the best pretzels in the countryside. I wanted to replicate that in India.”
Even though he had to shut down his Paharganj shop due to the pandemic, the Sultanpur bakery has been swamped with orders for not just cheese and bread but also salads and cheese and nuts platters.
“The Germans love our potato salad and platters. Earlier, we only focused on breads, crackers and cookies but the G20 Summit is making us push our limits. Our cooks are now following different recipes and all of them have been approved by the embassies,” said Dev N Acharaya, manager at the bakery.Their German classic breads, straight out of the Schmids’ recipe book, are different from the Indian breads since they are denser and also have a shorter shelf-life. Packing boxes of grissini, vanillekipferl and multigrain bread, Arif, a cook, says, “We have been receiving training to make different German and Italian breads and snack items. For our pretzels, we grind our own wheat into flour.”
For their Italian clients, the bakery has been preparing Focaccia bread, bread sticks, and asiago cheese. “We have to be very careful with the taste and quality as the dignitaries are used to certain flavours and don’t like other cheeses and breads,” says Dev.
Naresh Chettri, the head of the production and also the head chef, says the staff makes a special variety of croissants and pain au chocolat, which is a little flat and is not flakey. “We don’t know the exact name but we call ours Austrian croissants,” he adds. The cooks are now looking forward to heading to the embassy offices in Delhi over the weekend to serve the fresh loaves and cheese platters, says Dev. They have been provided with a stall to sell their products, he adds.
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