The Brun Supremacy: Why It’s Hard To Resist The Charms Of Brun Maska & Chai

Brun is pao (bread) with a hard crust. Coax any seasoned hands in an old Mumbai bakery (Yazdani especially) and this is what you are likely to hear: Brun, a popular breakfast version of the famous pao, is what you get after baking the pao, or gutli, as they call it colloquially, twice – or till it gets its signature café au lait-coloured crust.

All true, but that’s until you take the first bite of a freshly baked Brun with maska – dunked in tea or without – and suddenly the wonderment of this Silk Route gift strikes you. What is simply explained as vanilla hard (kadak) crust pao is actually a masterpiece that is high on both baking technique and dough-making skills.

Unlike the pao, the credit for which goes to the Portuguese, Brun is an interesting amalgamation of the baking principles of not only our (part) colonial rulers, who got us the art of fermenting with toddy, but also the Iranis, who were known to be the master bakers of the port stations of Uzbekistan and Samarkand. It is this ingenuity that is on display in the three layers of the Brun – the brittle top layer, the beehive-like airy second layer and the soft, chewy third that can soak in any curry like the pao.

In fact, the mark of a good Brun is its brittle top, which shatters if sliced by an amateur hand. It is this foreplay of textures and taste that makes Brun not only the ideal accomplice to tea but to quite a few stews and Goan/Kokan curries.

So where did Brun originate, and what is its fascinating story? One theory says that the Brun was inspired by the British Wigg, a similar-sized bun made with sweetened dough, herbs and spice. That could have been correct if Portuguese hadn’t landed in India – and made Bandra one of their settlements along with Goa – much before the Queen’s men.

The other more widely acceptable theory is its relation with poee, one of India’s first leavened bread. The story goes that when Portuguese traders decided to settle in India – for purpose of trade and otherwise – one of their major concerns was the bread. Back in the late 1400s, India was a nation of chapattis and naans – neither of which appealed to their palate. The Goan sannas, made using fermented batter, toddy, salt and water, and fluffy just as a bread back home, came close but didn’t make the cut. Where it did was with the technique, which was used to create the first bread like flatbread. This could explain why the traditional recipe of pao calls for toddy instead of yeast for fermentation. The idea behind using toddy was not only to make the dough rise and the pao fluffy and sponge-like, it was also for the sponge texture and the sweet or sour taste that made it a perfect pair with most Goan curries, like Vindaloo.

It was this toddy-flavoured and fermented pao that reached Bandra around the year 1500 with Portuguese merchants and Jesuits, where pao was born. At the helm of creating it were of course the well-trained Goans who owned the recipe, the oven and the bakery. And just like that, pao became an affordable part of the working class meal, especially in the port areas.

In the years that followed, pao transformed and took on its present shape – and along with it the legend behind its name, the most outrageous being “it got its name because the dough was knead by foot, not hand.”

Which would make one wonder, what’s the contribution of the Iranis then? The traditional Goan-managed bakeries underwent a makeover in 1796. This was the year we had the second influx of Iranians who were fleeing another massacre let loose by the Qajar Dynasty. Once rich and forced poor, these Iranian Zoroastrians (many of whom still own bakeries in Mumbai, like Yazdani and Koolar) decided to turn to occupations that Indians didn’t fancy much (or the British didn’t want) and yet were needed. It is said that even in Iran they were free to become bakers – albeit with restriction. It was this strength that they turned into an opportunity in India, where baking came with only one requisite: good baked products.

The freedom not only enabled them to get more baked goodies but also create these little, all-welcoming cafes complete with Bentwood Chairs, marble tabletops, pendulum wall clocks, wall mirrors, a family room (only Udupis had it by then) and a bakery that doled out pao, kadak toast, pies and a few other egg and sausage dishes.

Among all their innovation, the two standout items were the khari and the Brun. The story goes that in Surat, where the Iranians continued to serve their leavened bread along with pao, they realised that by evening these flatbreads would become dry. Sold at half the price, these were quickly picked by people who couldn’t afford the pao, and thus Dotivala’s famous Batasa and Parvali biscuit were born.

It was a similar observation that led to the birth of Brun as well. By 1800s, Irani cafes in Mumbai and Surat began making pao for the working population, for whom a fresh pao slapped with butter and dunked in tea was the ideal affordable yet substantial breakfast. But they soon realised that there was a market for the stale buns which had a drier crust, which they sold for cheap. This led to the creation of the Brun, where the dough is left for longer to rise traditionally, is knead twice, and baked twice. Thus resulting in that brittle crust and airy pockets that not only held the butter better – but was sheer indulgence on a pice.

Gradually, baking hit and misses, and the perfection of the rest timing and the second round of kneading eventually led to a new recipe for Brun, one of which calls for two tablespoons of hobs that provide that tinge of sweetness to the Brun.

Its texture, taste and combination with tea transformed Brun from just another way to salvage the day’s baked products to the dish that worked like balm on lonely souls – and satiated hungry stomach. And hundred years later, Brun Maska is among the counted few dishes for which people travel that extra mile to eat, making it a truly Michelin star.

(With Inputs from Mohit Balachandran, brand head, SodaBottleOpenerWala; Sabyasachi Gorai, Chef-owner, Lavaash By Saby; seasoned food writer, Antoine Lewis.)

Image Credit: Suprio Bose