Vini sighed. Her fourth experiment with baking bread had failed. She had done just as that cookbook, a relic from the Fifties, had prescribed – mixed some sugar and dry yeast in hot water and added it to the dough after a while, to no avail. What was wrong? The book assumed its readers knew how to cook, but Vini, an upwardly mobile young Indian woman of the Nineties, had no such life skills, only a couple of degrees and a PhD course to join.
Till then, she wanted to do something besides reading. The cookbook and her aunt’s oven, forgotten and missing a wire, were excavated when they moved last month. Vini’s father repaired it. But the dough would not rise outside the oven or inside it.
Copious amounts of flour had gone to waste. In Vini’s small home town, hardly anyone baked or had ovens. Even finding the yeast was a trial. Who could give her advice?
The next week, as he packed the bread, samosas and Swiss rolls Vini had bought, the bakery owner, whose children had been in school with her, asked her how she was spending her holidays.
“Baking,” said Vini, “and failing.”
“Why?”
“I’m doing something wrong with the yeast. It seems stagnant.”
“Aren’t you using warm water?”
“Yes, I’m using hot water.”
“No, warm. Heat kills.”
Once home, Vini heated some water, waited for it to cool a little, added some sugar and yeast. Soon enough, there was an unpleasant smell and it looked as if a light khaki-coloured fungus had rippled through and muddied the water. The yeast was working! And that, dear reader, has been the most joyful ending in Vini’s life, even thirty-five years on.
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