Notes from Hanoi

By Raul Dias

In the future, if pop culture historians were to ever dredge up the top social media trends that defined the ensuing Covid-19 worldwide lockdown, I can bet my last coffee bean that dalgona coffee would be right up there riding the crest. The creamy-headed beverage, itself, jostling for space with everything from banana bread and bad home haircuts to auto-tuned renditions of bella ciao.
And while the genesis of dalgona coffee is (erroneously!) attributed to both, a popular Korean caramel-coffee candy of the same name and to our very own, beaten to submission desi “phheti hui” coffee, its true origins lie in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in the guise of ca phe trung. Something I discovered on a trip to Vietnam a year ago. This, back in the good old days when I believed social distancing to be my private idiosyncrasy and when ‘Corona’ was still just another brand of beer! 

Egged On
Lending a certain gravitas to the “necessity is the mother of invention” proverb, dalgona coffee’s egg-enriched predecessor ca phe trung was the canny invention of a Hanoian barista named Nguyen Van Giang in 1946 at his coffee shop called Café Giang. Relishing the thick, creamy and surprisingly non-eggy tasting hot coffee seated in the legendary café perched along Hanoi’s ‘Coffee Street’ aka. Trieu Viet Vuong in the historic Hai Ba Trung District, I got a crash course in all things ca phe trung, thanks to the chatty manager.
Apparently, a post WWII shortage of tinned condensed milk that went into the then-popular iced ca pe sua da, steered Giang in the direction of stiffly beaten egg yolks to provide a creamy heft and rich taste to the coffee beverage that he decided to serve hot. Thus, imbuing his brand-new coffee concoction with a sort of rich, Tiramisu-esque texture and taste. But unlike dalgona that has just the creamy layer sitting atop hot or cold milk, ca phe trung has a thick body all the way through, making it more of a hybrid hot dessert than drink. One that is best tackled with a spoon, not sipped.

Back Story
Akin to the coffee beverage version of a set of nesting Russian dolls, I was soon to learn that there was yet another story within the story related to how Vietnam’s obsession with condensed milk—both as the dairy and sweetener component—in regards to its coffee drinking experience came about. And it was the French colonialists that set the course.
After producing the easy to cultivate robusta variety of coffee beans in Da Lat in climatically suitable central Vietnam in the early 1900s, the French realised that milk was hard to come by. This was bacecause milk and other dairy products had never been a part of the Vietnamese diet. And still are not, to this day. To fill in this deficit, the French started to import tinned condensed milk which was first used in traditional French coffee preparations like café au lait and then in the more localised Vietnamese iterations that sprung forth.

Chain Reaction
Over my one week in the country, as I dove further into Vietnam’s coffee culture, I soon came to some interesting realisations. There is no ‘grab-and-go’ coffee shop concept here. People prefer to sit down at cafés and have leisurely, conversation-enhanced coffee drinking sessions. Despite being second only to the Brazilians in terms of coffee bean (both arabica and robusta) exports at an annual turnover of about $3.10 billion, the Vietnamese prefer the sharper, bitter flavour and higher caffeine content of the less popular robusta coffee beans for their personal consumption. And this is why the big international coffee chains like Starbucks and Gloria Jean’s Coffee—both of whom primarily use the milder arabica beans in their beverages—have failed miserably in the local market that is dominated by cheaper, more artisanal cafés.
And why not? It is in places like these, that are literally on every street corner in the big cities and small towns of Vietnam, that one can get a taste of even more experimental versions of coffee beverages. From a yogurt coffee to a hipster-chic avocado and banana smoothie-meets-frappe called sinh to ca phe chuoi bo, the variety on offer boggles the mid. Maybe even a dalgona, someday. If not already.     


(This article first appeared in the 28th June 2020 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/travel/notes-from-hanoi/article31922421.ece)

Lockdown Loaves: The Rise of Sourdough!

At the very vortex of the lockdown baking frenzy is the humble, yet hip sourdough bread revelling in all its social media savvy. 

By Raul Dias

If anything, the last few months of lockdown have augmented one social media phenomenon. And that is the sheer volume of home baking activities being undertaken both here in India and across the pandemic-ridden world with an almost militant fervour. Just key in the catchphrases ‘banana bread’ or ‘chocolate chip cookies’ into any one of your social media account feed searches and watch the ensuing results boggle your mind.
But in particular, there is one bakery item that singularly gobbles up a mighty chunk of the proverbial baking pie. Sourdough bread. Gleaning dozens of pages and a gazillion hashtags on everything from Instagram to Pinterest, it would appear as though every Tom, Dick and…erm, Hari along with their next-door neighbour has secured a place on the sourdough bread bandwagon.

Back to Basics
So, what exactly is sourdough bread? And more importantly, why is it so darn popular these days? Characterised by a nutty aroma, this tangy-tasting, highly porous artisanal bread has a crusty surface and is made using natural yeast. All it takes is plain flour, water and a little salt to make a loaf of the bread. This, as opposed to commercial white bread that has as many as 20 ingredients, including hard to digest additives and dough conditioners. But what makes sourdough extra special is that it is most likely the first form of leavened bread that was ever created.     
Like most great inventions, sourdough bread was probably discovered by accident over 4,000 years ago by the ancient Egyptians. There is even written evidence of sourdough from hieroglyphs found in the pyramids, showing people making beer and bread at the same time in a sort of crossover fermentation.
With no need for commercially produced yeast—an almost impossible feat to procure in a lockdown—you just require a starter in lieu. A ‘living organism’ if you may, that is simply made from a mixture of water and flour. Microbes from the environment colonise the flour-water slurry producing gut-friendly, lactic acid-generating bacteria and wild yeast that aids in leavening.
Interestingly, even here in India, there has been a tradition of sourdough bread making. In Crumbs! her well-researched book on bread baking, food author and consultant Saee Koranne-Khandekar talks of a Himachali iteration of sourdough and even one made by Maharashtra’s Pathare Prabhu community who use a starter called gonda made from chana dal, water and milk. “We (Indians) have an almost instinctive understanding of gluten strengths and dough consistencies (stiff ought for poori, loose for chapati, etc.). We also understand wild cultures that exist in our environment, thanks to all the curd setting and the idli/dosa batter and kaanji making,” believes Koranne-Khandekar. 

Scents and Sensibilities
“Sourdough bread has gained popularity because of its delightful taste. Moreover, it is a great substitute for other breads made with commercial yeast. The lockdown has encouraged people to opt for healthier options and sourdough, therefore, has become a huge social media trend of late,” says Amar Dwivedi, Executive Chef at Grand Mercure Gandhinagar.
There is, however, more method to the apparent sourdough bread madness. In Cooked, his seminal book on all things food, American author Michael Pollan says that “…freshly baked bread is the ultimate olfactory synecdoche for hominess”. Making a strong case for the curative powers of aromatherapy vis-à-vis mood by way of freshly baked goodies, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that when young adults took part in an olfactory senses-heightening activity such as baking, they felt happier and more creative over the following days. Truly, aromatherapy for the depressed soul!
That is exactly why 24-year-old Gurugram resident and chef Akanksha Dean decided to swap her stove top for the oven and give baking bread a whirl. “Out of work as a chef-manager at a café, I suddenly found so much free time on hand that I decided to get into baking bread which I find so therapeutic and depression-ridding,” says Dean, who even launched a new lockdown-themed baking page on Instagram featuring her creations. “I particularly love the idea of sourdough bread which is perfect for baking these days as the starter is the sum of just two ingredients that everyone has in their pantry.” 

Nurture the Starter
Speaking of the sourdough starter, it has become so ‘legit’ that in US’s Silicon Valley, hipster coders are now blogging about the fermentation graphs of their sourdough starters. In fact, in August last year, Seamus Blackley one of the co-creators of the Xbox and self-professed ‘bread nerd’ resurrected a sourdough starter dating back to ancient Egypt that was made from residual yeast scraped from the insides of broken bits of pharaonic pottery.   
Closer home, one such afficionado is Shivam Bhatia from Bengaluru who has been nurturing his sourdough starter for the last three weeks. “The last time I took care of anything similar was when I was a teenager in the late 1990s when the craze of owning a virtual pet like the Japanese egg-shaped Tamagotchi one was all the rage,” says the 38-year-old VFX company owner. “Lockdown has given me the impetus and time to concentrate on the regular feedings that my sourdough starter needs.”
But if Bhatia ever were to shift base to either New York or Belgium, he would find that tending to his starter need not be a solo pursuit. Enter the sourdough starter ‘hotel’ where one can leave their starters to be tended to with regular feedings when travelling or indisposed in any way. All this, for a small fee, of course.
One such specimen is Brooklyn, New York’s Sourdough Inn which claims to be a “hotel for your sourdough, helping busy Brooklyn hipsters stay connected with the authentic bread experience”. The inn that was started by Mathias Jakobsen, a Danish-born internet entrepreneur a few years ago, also offers a three-week, $60 intensive ‘training and rehabilitation’ course where your neglected starter can be brought back to life.
Jakobsen himself was inspired by something radical that was taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. The Puratos Sourdough Library in St. Vith, Belgium not only tends to around 125 heirloom sourdough starter samples, but also develops, researches and preserves the biodiversity of different starters for the future.
  
#Wannabe
But just like sourdough dethroned banana bread in the baking trend wars, there seems to be another usurper slowly nipping through at sourdough’s crusty surface. And no, we are not speaking of the commercially produced, nutritionally challenged sourdough imposter social media has comically dubbed ‘sourfaux bread’.
Proving true the rather ephemeral nature of social media trends, the newest lockdown baking blitzkrieg comes to us in the form of ‘focaccia art’ where bakers are channelling their inner ‘Van Doughs’ and going all out to deck their slabs of the classic Italian flat bread with rustic pastoral scenes made up of fresh herbs and vegetables. Any takers? 

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 7th June 2020 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/lockdown-loaves-the-rise-of-sourdough/article31756457.ece