Sweating to make the sweet, flaky soul of Patna

“Babur brought two things to India—barood [gunpowder] and baqar-khani,” says Ejaz Hassan. A third generation naan-baai or bread maker, Ejaz is seated beside a tandoor or traditional clay oven, located next to his residence in Lodi Katra, one of Patna city’s oldest settlements. He has just cleaned the bell-shaped underground oven, and has daubed it with a mixture of clay and water that will help cool it.

Of all the lore surrounding the origins of the baqar-khani – the flaky, crisp, layered and sweet flatbread of Mughlai kitchens, Ejaz Hassan holds dear the tale he once heard from his grandfather, Hafiz Ameer Hassan, an ustaad naan-baai, a maestro among bread-makers. “One finds different variants of baqar-khani in Bengal and eastern Uttar Pradesh, but the one in Patna is the most exotic, and so it’s often referred as the shahi [royal] or Mughlai baqar-khani,” says Ejaz, waiting patiently for his assistant Imteyaz to finish re-heating the morning tea.

Over the last four to five decades, smaller loaves, dipped in sugar syrup to mimic the laminated appearance of the original, have dominated the market, priced at a fraction of the latter, a business tactic that irks Ejaz. “Ab toh har doosri roti baqar-khani hai, aur har doosra aadmi naan-baai. Patna mein aapko 25-30 rupay ki bhi baqar-khani mil jaayegi, magar na aap ka dil bharega na saalon saal kaam seekhne walon ka pet [Now, every other bread is labelled baqar-khani and every other person claims to be a baker. In Patna, you can get a baqar-khani for 25–30 rupees, but it will satisfy neither your heart nor the hunger of those who spend years mastering the craft].”

The cheap imitations literally take the bread out of the mouth of naan-bais, Ejaz continues, adding that no more than 50 baqar-khanis can be made in a day in a single tandoor, even with four men working from sunrise till sunset.

He hands a weighing scale to Imteyaz, who has just finished kneading a 10-kilo mound of dough. Imteyaz, a frail man in his mid-twenties, has been kneading since 6:30 a.m. It is now 9:30 a.m.

“It is a tough job,” says the apprentice, “but it is the most essential part of preparing baqar-khani.”

For every batch of dough, he kneads refined flour (maida) for hours, with milk, mixing in khoa (or mawa, milk solids produced by simmering milk on a low flame), sugar, roghan (oil) and ghee. “It is not a one-man job. The non-stop kneading is tiring, especially when the same person has to roll out the baqar-khanis as well.”

Imteyaz places a damp cloth over the just-kneaded dough, to prevent it from losing moisture. The baqar-khanis that the master and apprentice are working on today are not available for purchase in the markets. “They are prepared on pre-orders, and not all orders are huge. The order we have for today is to make 20 pieces. The profit margin won’t even cover the daily wages of two workers,” Ejaz says.

The baqar-khanis are sold at Rs. 275 to 300 a piece, with a making cost of Rs. 225-250. Ejaz and Imteyaz will work more than half a day to complete the order. “Work, after all, is work,” Ejaz says.

Imteyaz uses a weighing scale to measure out parcels of dough weighing around 400 grams. Meanwhile, Ejaz gets the tandoor ready.

“This traditional underground mud oven or tandoor is the lifeline of a baqar-khani, but with a very short life span,” says Ejaz. Every six months, the tandoor, which costs Rs. 6,000-7,000, is replaced. If it is handled with extra care or is used sparingly, it may last a year, but not longer.

Getting a good tandoor, Ejaz says, is difficult. Only a few expert potters, scarce in Patna, make these ovens. The new variety of baqar-khanis are made in electric ovens, “cutting on the cost and taste at once,” according to Ejaz, who is now igniting wood placed at the base of the tandoor as Imteyaz rolls out the dough into roti-shaped pieces.

Each roti is rolled out, slathered with butter and then folded into smaller squares which are left to rest for another 20 minutes. Each square of dough is then moulded into small balls that are finally rolled out for the tandoor. Once the baqar-khanis are rolled out, a knife with a curved tip is used to make cuts all over its surface so that it can soak in the flavours of ingredients still to be added.

“Before being placed in the tandoor, each roti will get a coating of jaggery mixed with milk, and saffron, for colour. Then sesame seeds are sprinkled on them,” says Ejaz, wiping the interior of the tandoor with a damp cloth, expertly removing all the soot and ash in one go.

Five hours into their work day, the baqar-khanis are not yet in the tandoor.

Ejaz begins to carefully place the rotis on his rafeeda, a round wooden slate covered with multiple layers of cloth that hold the bread and prevent it from slipping off while being placed in the tandoor. All 22 are placed inside, one by one, where they will bake in temperatures reaching 350 degrees Celsius, for 45-50 minutes.

Once ready, each baqar-khani will be pierced along the edges to soak up a mixture of sheera (sugar syrup) and ghee. “Each baqar-khani will finally weigh around 750 grams.”

That Patna’s name does not feature among Indian cities known for their food is unfair. “Patna is a city with a sweet tooth. The tables are never empty of balu shahi, shakar paara, luqum, meetha tukda, khaja, maqooti, zarda, mozaffar shola, naan pamba, sheer chai and even cookie-biscuits like the kulcha and pappa,” says Ejaz.

Historically, little has been written about the food habits of the people of Patna. However, the manuscript section of Patna University’s library houses the Sawanah-e-Lucknow (A Biography of Lucknow), an unpublished diary written by Nawab Nejat Hussain Khan of Patna, then known as Azeemabad, in which he documents a trip to Lucknow in the year 1843. The sweets of Lucknow, he says, are “nothing in comparison” to those of Patna’s Komali Halwaai, a confectioner of that era.

“While most sweet delicacies of the city can be attributed to the nawabs and their patronage, some became a part of Patna’s culture much later, in the 20th century, as a result of migration,” says Kundan Kumar, the fourth generation owner of Bihar Silao Khaja Bhandar, a store in the city’s Guzri Bazar area, its generous display of khajas making it impossible for passers-by to miss.

The store takes its name from Silao, a small town near Bihar Shareef in Nalanda district, 80 km south-west of Patna. Silao is known for its deep fried pastry, the khaja. Kundan’s great-grandfather Mishri Lal, known for his jalebis, first made khaja in Patna. All of Kundan’s employees are from Silao, living in or around the store, creating a mini-Silao of sorts in Guzri Bazar.

Kundan says the khaja’s history dates back to Gautam Buddha, who was reportedly offered a khaja while on his way to Nalanda. “With a GI [Geographical Indicator] tag, the khaja now represents Bihar on international platforms,” says Kundan.

His store sells two types of khaja, one sweet and the other plain. “Each one has 52 layers,” Kundan explains. “People from previous generations would say this represents the 52 stages of a Bodhisattva’s journey. This could be one reason why it is considered so auspicious in Bihar.”

Khaja is sold at Rs. 180 a kilo, and no more than 50 kilos are produced in a day due to shrinking demand. An expert halwai draws a salary of Rs. 20,000 while helpers are paid Rs. 12,000 to Rs. 15,000 a month.

Selling khaja is thus no longer a profitable business and the store retails other kinds of sweets and snacks. During the wedding season, Kundan’s employees are in great demand, travelling to other places in Bihar to make khaja.

Patna also has a large market for ‘bakery’ biscuits, produced in bakeries clustered in two localities, Sadar Gali and Sabzi Bagh, both located on Ashok Rajpath at a distance of about six km. Two kinds of biscuits are popular, pappa and kulcha. Pappa, slightly sweet to taste, is usually eaten with milk or tea, while kulcha biscuits may be sweet or savoury.

Most bakeries in Sadar Gali started as retailers of pappa biscuits and, as demand increased, began to employ trained karigars (artisanal bakers) to undertake production themselves, according to Sultan, the owner of Zeba Bakery in Sadar Gali. “I too started as a seller. I would go door-to-door on a cycle selling the biscuits sourced from Kalkatiya Bakery, Sabzi Bagh. The biscuits were cheap and tasty and so they were handy for the rickshaw-pullers taking a break at a tea stall as well as for the babu sahebs [upper classes] in their bungalows.”

Over 35 years, Sultan, like many others in Sadar Gali, opened his own bakery. A traditional bhatti (a brick oven) was impossible in the congested Sadar Gali, so they shifted to electric machines. “Still, despite all the ease, you cannot make it without an expert karigar,” he says.

Expert karigars are employed in larger bakeries that can afford a separate working area. The bakers accept a verbal contract for a year’s employment, and receive an advance lump-sum payment of Rs. 1-2 lakh. They are expected to return this money to the employer within the work period, either as monthly deductions from their wages or all at a time when they want to quit the job.

At the end of a maze of alleyways in Sabzi Bagh, Ballu Bhai has just stepped out of a bakery. It is time for the maghrib (sunset) prayer, but Ballu has no intention of going to the mosque.

Now 40 years old, Ballu has given 25 years of his life to the 12 feet x 18 feet bakery. “People come, learn and leave—and some unfortunate men are replaced by machines,” he says, pointing to a large flour mixer. “This metal thing has taken the job of at least two people who could have earned 600 rupees a day.”

Ballu says the finished product is always celebrated, while the maida, milk, cardamom, oil and yeast that must be baked for hours in a bhatti are rarely taken note of. “We have a similar life,” he says—the brightly lit bakeries rule the roost, while bakers are rarely acknowledged.

“Write that we don’t have a life out of the four walls of these bakeries,” he says, with an unsettling smile. “Write that there’s nothing alive in here apart from a burning furnace.”

This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).