I love good bread. Freshly baked, warm bread is the ultimate morning experience if you don't count Darjeeling tea. Geetha Aunty of Boston is famous for her bread. My mother stayed with her a few years back on her trip to the US. At that time she had baked some bread flavored with orange rinds. My mother couldn't stop talking about how she left the bread to bake in the night and in the morning the entire house was filled with the aroma of fresh bread!

This kind of imagery usually has me hooked. Ever since then I have dreamed of waking like that at my house too. Now, finally, that wish will come true. My parents who were in Boston a couple of days back bought a bread maker recommended by Geetha Aunty. I am more excited about the bread maker coming home than them!

Bread though is a very individual thing. There are many people who cannot stand it while there are others who swear by it. My uncle, for example, has this hatred for bread that is difficult to describe. He feels bread is for the poor and not for people who can afford better food! This is probably a relic of the times when bread was always made with refined flour (maida) rather than whole wheat. It came really cheap.

These days, however, you get bread made with a variety of flours and can cost quite a fortune. Walk into a Bread Talk (one is inside Q Mart at Banjara Hills) and you can see the different kinds of bread at prices that will put the Alphonso mango to shame. Gone are the days of bread only being a cheap, poor man's food!

I am not a regular cook. But I like to dabble once in a way. One of the things I have tried my hand is bread. It has never come right. I sure hope that changes in the coming days!