My OG Bangalorean, and the Bakery Culture She Brought Home

“This is a story of a little bit of ache that makes the happiness mean even more.”

My mother, a third-generation Bangalorean and a resident of the Cantonment, specifically Frazer Town, is one of the true-blue Bangalore girls in my life. I’ve never met a girl like her before.

She went to Good Wills Girls High School, then Mount Carmel College, learnt music and languages and so much more, before joining Cathedral High School and College, where she taught English and Biology for years. Miss Ida, as she was known at Cathedral's, was particularly loved for instilling a love of Shakespeare in her students.

Among the gazillion things my incredible mother did was bring Bangalore’s bakery culture into our home. And that’s what this is about.

And yes, this is the Cantonment we came from. We are fourth-generation residents of the Cantonment.

Cathedral High School was navigated to by Mother first on her Luna and then on a Kinetic Honda, the quintessential bike for the ladies of Bangalore at the time. All red vehicles. I too have a red car that I call my own. Don’t know what all runs in the blood.

Anyway, Cathedral’s is situated in Richmond Town, where some old Bangalore bakeries were her neighbours. All Saints Bakery and Fatima were her two go-to bakeries.

Every day, and I mean every day, she would finish school and get us treats from these bakeries. Our favourites happened to be kheema buns, all kinds of meat-laden puffs, which Mother calls “patties”, samosas and then biscuits. Butter, salt, ginger, coconut, you name it.

They came home along with buns, dinner rolls, knotted rolls, hot dog rolls and bread. Loaves of plain cake were bought from Fatima and All Saints too. I can still taste those margarine-laden, vanilla-flavoured cakes.

I don’t know how many “patties”, “muffins” and butter biscuits this family alone must have consumed. And since Cathedral’s was right next to Fatima’s and All Saints, I can only imagine how many times she and her friends wandered into those bakeries too.

Further along her way home were more of these old Bangalore bakeries with their delicious baked treats.

Creator Bakery was the next stop. This one was on Kamaraj Road, right off Commercial Street. Just as an old Bangalorean would, she called it Cavalry Road.

There, she bought simply the best loaf of milk bread I have ever eaten. A flatish, rectangular loaf with rounded edges, it was one of my favourite things to eat as a child. The flavour is something I still remember.

It came home hot and freshly baked and was devoured in minutes.

What beats sweet, white, warm, freshly baked bread?

Honestly, nothing.

The other favourite from Creator Bakery was the “Cashew Pakoda”, pakoda and not pakoras. We South Indians call it pakoda.

Another absolutely delicious snack.

We’d wait for her return and what came out of her handbag were these crisp, crunchy brown paper bags, carrying the most inviting smells and scrumptious treats.

Further down the road came Thom’s Bakery, and of course we got the sugar doughnuts and mutton “patties”. There was also a jam doughnut, sliced in half with a glassy maroon layer of Kissan mixed-fruit jam.

Then there was “muffin”.

Nope, not the “muffin” as you know it.

It was the Dilpasand.

The “muffin” was flaky and filled with coconut and “plums”. Raisins were called plums.

Do note the language, because this was the very Bangalore Cantonment way of speaking. There were all these little words and expressions that we carried around without thinking about where they came from.

Mother also told me about Thom’s Bakery when it was Thom’s Café. There stood a jukebox where you put in a coin and chose a song to listen to while you sat in the café.

Mother says that after attending service at St. John’s Church, they would go to Thom’s Café for a bite. And apparently, the regular order was idli, sambar and ulundu vadai.

Yes, Thom’s Café served South Indian breakfast too.

Next stop was Albert Bakery on Mosque Road.

The kheema samosas date back to my mother’s spinster days. My grandmother and grandfather used to frequent this place and bring back the meat-laden kheema samosas and chicken patties.

These bite-sized samosas and “patties” have been part of our family for eons, really.

We aren’t done yet.

Further down was Mosque Road Circle, the roundabout with a concrete lotus painted brick red at the centre and an iron circle encompassing it.

At the curb stood an Iyengar Bakery.

From here came the Honey Cake, soft, orange-coloured cake coated with grated coconut and with a thin layer of jam on top.

Then the Khara Buns were bought too for my diabetic grandmother, as though they were somehow the better option.

All of it was fresh. All of it was delicious.

It was here, Mother tells me, that cake batter was sent during Christmas to be baked. Again, not from my lifetime, but a story that has made its way into the family books.

The route then took her through M.M. Road and Cox Town Market.

There stood Thomson’s Bakery.

This was the place for bread.

She would buy white bread until the marketing gimmick of “brown” bread stepped in and we somehow lost the charm of eating freshly baked white bread.

Here she also bought the salt biscuits.

Then came a newbie.

Sweet Chariot, at the end of Bachamal Road, close to Komala’s.

Black Forest Cake, still the best one in Bangalore. Pineapple pastry. Éclairs. Rum tarts.

On our birthdays, the Iyengar Bakery sponge cakes with sugary pastel buttercream and “Happy Birthday” piped in jam were gradually replaced by the cheesecake, dark chocolate cake or Black Forest Cake from Sweet Chariot.

It was a different kind of cake, a different kind of birthday, and perhaps the beginning of a different bakery culture finding its way into our home.

And then there was another bakery that was very special to my mother, one she has told me about repeatedly.

Excelsior Bakery on Seppings Road. It now resides on Kamaraj Road.

Among all the lovely hoard of bakery treats was the somewhat unheard-of coconut burfi from Excelsior Bakery.

Every time she speaks of her father, this story features. She remembers that coconut burfi as something particularly delicious, among all the other things he brought home.

I guess by now you’ve caught the bakery culture my mother brought into our lives.

We always had tins filled with butter biscuits, bread, buns and dinner rolls, and loaves of plain cake around the house.

No complaining that it had maida and sugar.

None whatsoever.

Every evening, 4 pm was, and continues to be, tea time.

We dunked biscuits into the delicious chai she made. Mama’s tea tin always had skins of cardamom in it, and so the beautiful, sweet aroma hung around the house in the evenings.

She made the best tea.

She added white sugar.

Those days were the best days of our lives.

We had no care in the world.

We drank milk tea with white sugar in it. We dunked our butter biscuits in it every day. We ate puffs, samosas and loaves of plain cake.

And perhaps that is what food does.

It takes something as ordinary as a biscuit dunked into tea and turns it into a place you can return to.

Oh, to live those beautiful days again.

I’m off to make some strong ginger-cardamom tea.

Got to go home and get a dose of our beloved old bakeries soon.