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In Kashmir there's bread for every season
In one of the longest-running traditions of bakery, largely untouched by modernity, every day, long before the dawn, tens of hundreds of baker families in the Valley fire up wood tandoors to bake choat, the flatbread with thick edges and furrowed surface, or lavaas, a lighter variation of pita bread. Hilal Mir writes.
Who qualifies for the tag of a genuine Kashmiri? Noted Kashmiri intellectual Aga Ashraf Ali once laid out the criteria. A Kashmiri is the one who can shuffle a kangri (a fire pot filled with charcoal ambers) under a 10-kg quilt with his feet even in semi-sleep. Another criterion requires the person to cut into four pieces with bare hands a scalding hot goshtaba, a half-a-pound ball of mutton that marks the end of multi-course wazwaan.
The less hazardous way is to ask a Kashmiri how many different types of breads are made in the Valley. If he says more than twenty and none of them resemble the roti, you not only have a fullblooded Kashmiri, you also have a case fit for sedition.
In one of the longest-running traditions of bakery, largely untouched by modernity, every day, long before the dawn, tens of hundreds of baker families in the Valley fire up wood tandoors to bake choat, the flatbread with thick edges and furrowed surface, or lavaas, a lighter variation of pita bread. Both are taken with salted tea in the morning. Salted tea and choat or lavaas combination is still the only breakfast the poor can afford.
