Naan is a traditional flatbread made using the dough enriched with ghee (clarified butter) & curd (yogurt) and cooked at a high temperature inside a clay oven called tandoor. Lately, naan dough is prepared just like any other bread dough using leavening agents such as yeast, baking soda, or baking powder and baked like pizza over a hot stone kept inside the oven. Here I have added turmeric powder to make my naan bread bright & beautiful.
Basil seeds (sabja seeds) are one of the most sought-after summer ingredients in Asia. According to Indian Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), basil seeds are useful to lower the heat of our body. So it is a good idea to add basil seeds into our diet during summer to keep us cool & hydrated. This summer I have baked a loaf of egg-free banana bread using soaked basil seeds as a substitute for the egg.
Earlier elders in our family were of the opinion that baking cakes is a painstakingly strenuous procedure, and hence nobody in my family dared to bake cakes at home. We usually devour the cakes bought from the renowned bakery in our locality. During Christmas we had opportunities to relish home baked cakes like dark brown fruit cake, pale yellow semolina cake, etc. shared by our friends & neighbors. Those days home-baked cakes were so special for people like us as it was rare to find such soft scrumptious old-fashioned Christmas cakes even in the city’s premier bakery. Later we all bought the oven and bake spongy cakes at home even with local flavors. Here I have baked an eggless fig upside down cake using whole wheat flour & foxtail millet flour.
Generally, we prefer to take moist spongy homebaked cakes drizzled with honey, fruit juice, or chocolate syrup than the ones with buttery sugary frosting sold in the bakery or restaurants. When we bake a cake at home we have the liberty to use healthy ingredients. We could replace plain flour (maida) with whole wheat flour, butter with vegetable oil, sugar with other guilt-free sweeteners, etc. Besides we can add fresh fruits, nuts & seeds to tease our palate. Now I have baked a spongy cornmeal cake with delicious jackfruit glaze using cornmeal & whole wheat flour.
Baking bread at home is actually not as exhausting as making roti/ chapathi. It is just a time consuming preparation and hence it just requires a planning well ahead of our meal. Nevertheless, it is truly a rewarding experience to bake the bread at home with the flours and spices of our choice and also to serve oven-fresh flavorful fluffy bread to our family for breakfast. Here I have used equal portions of whole wheat flour & plain flour (maida), neutral oil in place of butter and caraway seeds (omam/ ajwain) for its wonderful aroma and medicinal properties, and baked an egg-free pav bread at home.
I have been planning to bake a mango cake in this summer, but I could not keep a few separately for baking as they were usually devoured in a couple of days. Now my mother sent me the last batch of organic mangoes that were plucked from the trees grown in her backyard when the fruit bearing season of mango is almost nearing an end. Now I have baked an eggless mango cake with two ripe mangoes and left the remaining for my family to relish them to our hearts’ content at the end of this mango season.