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I’ve been spoiled by good bread.  When I was growing up my mother would bake bread almost every week.  Everybody who visited for dinner or something would compliment my mom on the good bread but it was something I took forgranted.  One year my Uncle Dan’s Christmas story was about his quest to find good bread in Washington D.C.  It was interesting, but at the time I couldn’t really relate.

I went off to college and didn’t eat much bread.

After graduating in 2004 I went to visit some friends in Europe.  The first day I ended up eating in a bakery/cafe just outside Brussels that had these huge loafs of artisan bread.  It wasn’t something I had seen before, and the bread was wonderful.  Since then I’ve found several places that a little closer which are similar, but they fascinate me.

A few years ago the Independent weekly put out their food issue with the title, “The rise and fall and rise of good bread”.   An interesting issue which sat on my desk for a long time, it had different peoples stories and their experience with bread.  My favorite article was by David Auerbach who ended up making several bread ovens in this quest.  That sounded really interesting to me, so I started thinking about making a bread oven.  I didn’t really have really have the space or felt like I would use it enough, but I filled it away in the back of my mind.

In Bangladesh there isn’t much in the way of wheat.  It’s one long term goal of MCC has never been very successful with.  The best bread that is available is tandori rutti or nan and that’s just considered a snack.  While designing the workshop and house I started thinking about a wood fired oven.  Austin and Daniel started also started thinking about it independently.  So a few weeks ago we had everybody out to the house and had a oven making party after another saturday and a few mornings this week we wrapped it up.  I put some pictures of it up on flickr.  Asha kori ektu pore khub bhalo ruti hobe –  I hope there will be good bread soon.

Thicker than water…

In general there are 3 kinds milk in Bangladesh.  UHT, powered and
fresh.  UHT is the Ultra-high temperature processing which allows milk
to be kept at room temperature while sealed, powdered milk which I
think most of us are familiar with, although it still has the fats.
Fresh milk, comes from Dudh wallahs, or milk men, who go around on
their bicycles with a plastic bucket full of warm milk.  Milk power
seems to be taking over the market to the frustration of people
milking cows.  My coworker Jodi tells me that it has to do with the
high food prices in 2008 and the government started allowing the
import of powered milk.  Apparently a lot of rejected milk power from
other countries gets imported in bulk and repackaged in Bangladesh.

I tend to drink a lot of milk in the US, but in Bangladesh I only use
milk in things, like tea and coffee or cereal.  The problem with UHT
and powered is the taste, and the problem with the fresh milk is that
it get’s watered down.  When I went to LAMB hospital in Dinajpur a few
months ago I was thinking through these issues.  Latometers are a
common way of testing the specific gravity of milk and by extension
quality.  I got to talking to some of the staff there some of whom
have been in Bangladesh for a very long time, wondering whether
introducing lactometer’s would have any impact on the situation. The
first observation was that the word for accountablity doesn’t exist in
Bangla.  The second was that in the old math education curiculum was
the following math question.  If you have enough milk for 4 customers,
but have 5, how much milk do you need to add?

Bogra is famous for it’s sweet yogurt or mishti dui as it’s called.
Daniel makes his own yogurt and was having problems getting it to set
because of the water.  He started using UHT milk and that sets up
well, but he asked an old dui maker how to find good milk.  The rather
disparaging response was that it was all bad.  Jeamon manush, teamon
dudh – As the people, so the milk.

Last week I went to a wedding of one of my co-workers. I knew it was an evening wedding, but there were two pieces of information I didn’t know. It was going to be a Hindu wedding, and Hindu weddings are a lot more interesting than Muslim weddings.

The wedding was in a village outside of Jaipurhat. To say it was surreal is a bit of a understatement. It felt at the same time like and unlike like going out to a concert in the US. It starts by everybody vamping before going out. Then tea stall hopping. Then everybody is on their phone trying to figure out where the party is before the actual event. At that point we got picked up by the party bus. Ah ha hush that fuss everybody move to the back of the bus. That’s where the first band was playing.

It was a loud, long evening. We didn’t leave for the wedding until like 9 in the evening and it was well after midnight before I got to sleep but it was a good time.

Here are some pictures I took at the festivities.