Did I forget to add salt?
Photographs of Bread Bakers and Bread Sellers…
Bread is out of favor now, what with the no-gluten craze, the low or no carb craze or just the hard body craze. But who doesn’t love bread? Hot from the oven, slathered with butter or dipped into a bowl of borscht or wrapped around falafel and drizzled with hummus? It’s all delicious. The chapati makes plain old lentils a dish fit for a king.
Above, an Uzbek woman stands behind round loaves of bread that appear at every meal in every Uzbek home.
Cooling bread in Aleppo
A man in Aleppo, Syria has bought what we call pita and the Arabs call khobz. It is hot from the oven and he drapes it on a public handrail to allow it to cool before he packages it in the plastic bags he has stuffed in his back pocket. If he didn’t let it cool, the bread would stick together. I think his job is delivering bread or selling bread to people who don’t want to come to the bakery.
This bread is thinner than the pita we get in America. It’s soft and naturally sweet. Hot from the oven slathered with olive oil and a spice mix called za’ataar… So good!
Rabari Breakfast
A Rabari woman turns a hot chapati with her fingers. Her kitchen is outdoors on the clean-swept earth in front of her small home. Chapati and dahl or lentils are served every day, maybe for every meal if the family is poor. The average Indian is slender. I think it is easier to be slender if you eat the same food day after day. You’d only look forward to eating if you were truly hungry. Eating would be more like breathing. You’d do it because you want to be alive, not because it gives you pleasure.
That reminds me, I have a French chocolate bar left over from Christmas. Talk about pleasure. A special thanks to my daughter Marie, who brought it from Paris. Hi, Marie!
I recommend: www.uzbekjourneys.com when visiting Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
http://www.htoindia.com/ when visiting India…contact Sheesh