Delicacies from Local Iyengar Bakeries

As kids, our snacks’ spectrum had three zones. The lower end was Britannia Marie Gold, Milk Bikis, Cream Treat, and Jim Jam. The higher end was masala dosai, chola poori (chole bhature as you call it), sandwich, samosa, and the ones you get from a “bhavan” or “vilas” type restaurant. The veg puff, egg puff, samosa sundal, and cream cakes from the local bakery was the midway.

The bakery items weren’t as boring as the biscuits or as sophisticated as the masala dosai or the chola poori. For many, they were the right snack. Now that I think about it, for some reason, ninety percent of all the local bakeries are named as “Bangalore Iyengar bakery” or “Iyengar bakery”. A small percentage went by the name “Zam Zam bakery”. It’s like how almost every Biriyani restaurant in Chennai is either named as “Thalapakatti”, “Chennai Rawther”, or “Vaniyambadi Biriyani”.

Also, I honestly don’t understand the relation between “Iyengar” and a “bakery”. The question still keeps me up at night.

Last week, for some reason, I kept thinking about veg puffs. It’s been ages since I had one from a local bakery. Ordering through the app has made me lazy and kept me from going back to the local delicacies.

Coincidentally, I also stumbled upon an amazing local bakery on the way home from work. I’ve been meaning to get the puffs from the place and yesterday it happened. When I stopped at the bakery, I saw the boys at the store busy packing puffs, coconut balls, and cakes. I got three veg puffs to go. If it wasn’t a go-to order, he would’ve taken a veg puff from the heater, placed it on a paper plate, cut it into half before handing it over.

The puff tasted as I imagined. It was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. It looked very similar to the puff pastry you see in the West. As kids, we used to peel off the top layers, eat the crunchy pastry first and then eat the part that has the vegetable filling.

As I enjoyed the puff, I also thought about the Samosa kozhambu combo, which was a common delicacy in Ambattur when I grew up. The store owner would mash a samosa in a stainless-steel bowl, and will pour a generous amount of the spicy gravy that was made with besan flour, onions, coriander, and other spices. I’ve never come across such wonderful flavour combinations in my life.

With the modernization of everything, right from tea shops to bakeries, these delicacies are fading from our lives. High-end bakeries are popping up everywhere these days selling high-margin items like brownies, chocolate truffle cakes, tiramisu, mousse, burgers, nuggets and so on.

The local bakeries that have been feeding hungry school kids on their way back home and giving working-class people a sense of fulfillment at the end of their day are in danger of becoming yet another high-end bakery.

The world needs more Iyengar bakeries, even though the name doesn’t make any sense.