Double roti to pao to poi: Who brought bread to India?

Bread’s arrival in India

Baking bread was alien to India till around four centuries back – neither did we have ovens nor did we use yeast or refined flour/maida. It was traders and colonisers who introduced bread to Indian shores.

Bread came to Bengal, thanks to the French. The French East India Company established Fort d’Orleans at Chandernagore. While they brought with them French wine and cheese, their most important contribution was the loaf of plain white bread which is referred to as “pau ruti’. While Goans claim the word “pav” is the Goan version of the Portuguese “pao”, in Bengal, it was believed to be derived from the French word for bread –– “pain”.

In Goa, bread was introduced by the Portuguese and the genesis is far better documented. Since maida or refined flour wasn’t commonly used in India or Goa, the Portuguese used aata or whole wheat flour. Yeast was replaced with toddy as a fermenting agent. And an apparatus with a hot surface was fashioned to replace the oven. When the dough was mixed, left to rise and fermented, it was kneaded into a roll or a round shape and placed on the hot surface. It usually took 10 to 15 minutes for the pao to be baked.

Goan bread remains distinct: doughy and less risen than traditional bread. Over time, the Portuguese developed a variety of breads, from the pocket-like poi to the hard-crusted undo, the crunchy ring-shaped kakon, and the soft square katre pao.

Another story has it that the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries offered to teach Catholic Goans bread-baking as a means of sustenance. This process slowly travelled along the northwest coast, eventually reaching Bombay – resulting in the pao used in keema pao and vada pao.

Bread from the Middle East

Speaking of keema pao, there is a second route bread could have taken to reach India. Maida or refined flour came to India from the Middle East. As did the concept of the oven. Bakeries soon popped up across India and it seems that the Muslim bakeries across India took to baking bread, and even Christmas cakes––I will discuss this in another piece. This would also explain the creation of keema pao found across Maharashtra, especially in the Irani bakeries.

The British and the double roti

Every place colonisers set up trading posts or principalities became home to a version of bread. In Kanpur (then Cawnpore), the British set up a military cantonment and a trading post after the Treaty of Banaras was signed in 1773. And along with them came the “double roti”––simply a bun called so because it doubled in size when baked. Chef Kunal Kapur, who hails from Kanpur, describes the Kanpuri bun kebab in great detail. A flattened kebab, placed inside a freshly baked bun, with green chili chutney and pickled onions. The perfect marriage of phoren and Indian flavours and cooking.

So, the next time you bite into a slice of bread, remember to thank not just the Lord for your daily loaf but also the traders and colonisers who introduced bread to our kitchens.

Next week, I will be writing about that winter favourite – halwa. How to make it, where it came from and its infinite varieties.