Bread making machines

CliveG

Is it possible to buy bread making machines in India (Kochi in particular)? Unfortunately Indian bread, with its high sugar content, is not ideal if you want toast and marmite or cucumber sandwiches! The house we stayed in did not have an oven and I suspect this will be the case when we come back in November. Also is it possible to get strong bread flour both white and brown so that I can bake my own bread?

ellexesse

I can't answer about the machines themselves but I brought a bread machine here and have hardly ever used it. This is because you can find nice bakers who bake less sugary loaves (Parsi bakeries are great if you have them) and also, I found it very hard to find strong white flour. You can get round the problem by using flour with glutenn added in yourself (in powder form). I bought this in Mumbai from a flour wholesaler who supplies restaurants (Crawford Mkt).

Hope this helps

Elle

capt_mahajan

For machines, I would ask a bakery in Kochi. Many do it by hand, but I would guess the larger ones should be using machines. They should be able to tell you where to buy, and even which ones are good.

Nick-H

Do try searching... they have been discussed here before, but, I think, sometime back.

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CliveG

Yes I did that and it came up with a post about the Tsunami and another about Germans naming their bakeries - German Bakery! Not the response I was hoping for!

PeakXV

I don't know about bread machines or white flour .... but that stone ground atta flour that you can buy at any market is full of bran and very good for you!

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capt_mahajan

you get bread made of atta flour too, by most of the big names...
at least in many big cities.

crvlvr

ask your local baker to bake some loafs according to your own specifications. some may may be willing to oblige.

CliveG

That would be excellent - it might be a new line for them!

I have used Atta flour for rotis etc but I was not not sure if it is strong enough for English type bread and I couldn't experiment as I didn't have an oven. So now I need to find a house with an oven - and I'll be a happy baker!

the opoponax

a bit of a digression, but i would love to get the lowdown on the different kinds of flour used in indian breads. my roommate is indian, makes his own chappattis, paranthas, puris, etc. and has what seems to be about a million different varieties of flour. none of which, he insists, is equivalent to my own stash of white, wheat, cake, and cornmeal...

and, as my contribution to the topic -- i remember reading an article in the New York Times a couple years ago about how Pillsbury brand flours have made inroads in the Indian market -- i think the article was about women in Bangalore. not sure if that helps at all...

CliveG

You are right - Pilsbury flour products are available in supermarkets that I have been into in India. As for different types of flours I went to our local Indian store in Portsmouth today and they have almost one length of the shop devoted to flour of all types - gets confusing.

fsg

We have a bread maker in India, bought s/h here and taken out,
I get yeast from Lakeland , £1.00,and they sell dough improvere there too. thoeugh im not too sure of its efficacy.
We use a mixture of Maida and Atta, cant tell you the exact proportions right now as the receipe is there and not here, from memory I think it might be 250 gm Maida to 150 Atta and using milk powder, not readily available there always as the milkmen use it adulterate to milk, and the 'whitener' is not real mik powder, if you read the label, and is sweetened... no use really, so we take milk powder from here, It goes off , after 6 months even in a sealed packet.

Th flours we get have the protein marked on the packet, Pondicherry mills and Pilsbury, and they veer to the 'srong', as opposed to soft flour.

What you do have to take particular care of is the amount of water to use, as these flours have a different absorption rate to' our ' flours.

We normally get very good results, except when the current goes off, that can be very unpredictable, so normally use the delay to start 3am ready for 8am b/fast

fsg

From the Flour advisory board web site

The protein content is very important in determining how flour will perform during baking. The protein in flour forms gluten, which is crucial in baking. Generally speaking, breadmaking flours have a high protein content (11-14%), plain flour has a lower protein content (7-10%).

Im sure the protein content of Indain flours is about 12%, alsoo I forgot we always us 1 crushed Vit C tablet, not the flovoured ones, to give the yeast a little bit of a kick up the proverbial

CliveG

Thanks fsg and others for your advice - I think I will take a machine out with me and also talk to our local baker in Kochi.

icetea

That's strange, I am not aware of other wheat flour types available in India apart from atta and maida (ther rest being rice, besan, corn and some other grains), and these are the ones used for all those items (chapatis, parothas, puris). There isn't so much difference between the different maida and atta brands on the market, especially the maida ones, which aren't even branded properly, although I do have my preferences among atta brands, as chapatis are slightly softer with some.

I don't know much about bread machines or bread dough, but for example I made yeast& milk based dough once from (Pondicherry) maida, for doughnuts, and it was reasonable, so I guess you can try using maida for bread, maybe mixing with some atta as someone here suggested.

As about milk powder, it's available alright in India. Pillsbury flour is also available in the atta sector but I don't know about maida (I tried their atta once but wasn't very happy with it).

There are different varieties of Indian bread, as someone was saying, so if you search properly you will discover some that aren't sweet and even brown bread or mixed flours breads. Sure, the bread types found in most supermarkets are sweet, but even there you'll always find sandwich bread, which isn't sweet. Bakeries will have all sorts of breads, including brown, and so do for example retail chains like Reliance Fresh. That being said, I also don't like Indian bread and rarely buy any, but luckily I love chapatis so I don't really crave for bread here.