It is 7 am and Bandra’s Carter Road is buzzing with joggers and fitness freaks taking rounds of the promenade. At a time when most of the shops and restaurants in the neighbourhood are shut, Parkbench is prepping for brisk business. This month-old boulangerie-cum-patisserie has been serving freshly-baked bread to patrons who are often looking for a healthy alternative to the mass-produced variety. Its first batch goes into the oven at 7 am and is often sold out within minutes. The next batch of multigrain, gluten-free, bajra and ragi varieties are pushed into the oven by 8 am. Following this, the bakery shuts for business, only to open again in the evening to bake. In all, they bake eight times a day.
“I grew up in south Bombay where the Irani cafes had a distinct culture of serving fresh bread. I wanted to offer a similar service and decided to do away with a centralised kitchen,” says co-owner Dharmesh Karmokar, who also runs Nom Nom in Bandra and Silver Beach Cafe and Copa in Juhu with his partner Hitesh Keswani.
Most city bakeries and restaurants bake once or a maximum of twice a day. But now, many are rising to the idea of fresh bread. Over the last few years, food chains and restaurants are pushing the envelope to give customers a more fulfilling dining experience. Since eating out is a multi-sensory activity, in-house baking successfully manages to cater to all the senses. For instance, to see dough take shape of a spongy bread, the aroma of freshly baked bread wafting through the restaurant and of course, the most important aspect, its taste, all put together completes the experience. Subway mastered this a long time ago and it is encouraging to see more restaurants follow suit.
The newly-opened French patisserie in Kala Ghoda, La Folie, plans to bake its buttery croissants every hour. “We will bake small batches of three or four pieces. When a fresh batch of croissants is taken out of the oven, people are automatically drawn to the aroma and it will make people buy it,” says Parthesh Patel of La Folie. Currently, the patisserie serves plain, chocolate and surprise croissants that are baked at its Andheri kitchen. Though the bakery is finding recognition in city’s dessert lovers for its mouth-watering creations, it has already found fans for its buttery croissants that go well with the hot chocolate served in traditional steel pots.
Then there is the northern Italian cuisine restaurant Serafina at Lower Parel which serves up fresh focaccia — or schiacciata as it’s called in Italy — as part of its breadbasket. “Our traditional Lava stone ovens allow us to bake focaccia in four minutes, so we prefer to serve it fresh,” says the restaurant’s executive chef, Rahul Kulkarni.
However, serving freshly-baked bread comes with some downsides too. “With smaller batches you don’t have any control over sales since one cannot predict how many will get picked up. Baking processes such as proofing the batter, and cooling the bread also take time. People may not want to wait that long,” says Patel.
But that doesn’t seem to be affecting any of these restaurants right now. Chef Kelvin Cheung of Ellipsis uses the limited number of croissants he bakes to make people clamber for them. “We are not a bakery, but we bake as a service to our customers. Whenever I find some time, I make some croissants and upload photos on Twitter or Instagram, so that people can come and get them,” says Cheung. These get sold out within 15 minutes, straight off the oven.
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