In 1608 the British were permitted by the Mughals to establish a factory in Surat. A few years late the Dutch East india Company also set up a factory in Surat. Surat became the headquarters of the British Western Presidency before they moved headquarters to Bombay.
The Parsis who worked in the Dutch factory got the ovens when the Dutch left Surat. Thus started the legacy of Dotivala Bakers and other Parsi family owned bakeries that are still iconic in the city of Surat, continuing the legacy of the thriving centre of British, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Persian and Armenian mercantile colonies.that existed in medieval Surat. Surat’s famous muslin cloth was used as the flour sieve and the dough was made without any water. The dough was fermented with palm wine called toddy, causing the dough to rise and making the bread soft when prepared. These breads were also long-lasting. Faramji Pestonji Dotivala continued to supply breads to the remaining colonials in the 1700s after the factories were closed. The leftover dried breads were sold cheap, which gained considerable popularity due to their lightness and crispy texture. With the increasing demand, the bakers began to dry breads in the ovens especially to achieve the desired dryness and texture. They were also shaped differently. Even today these biscuits are made and are very popular, and are known as Irani biscuits. Doctors recommended these biscuits as an easily digestible, relatively low-calorie, energy foods, boosting their popularity. Once the patient had recovered strength, he was advised to eat biscuits with fat so the biscuits were made using excess shortening, giving birth to the Farmasu Surti Batasa or Butter Biscuits that are now a Surat staple. Surati families whether Parsi, Hindu, Jain or Muslim, have these biscuits, often dipped in ‘malai’ with their afternoon cuppa. The Parsee bakers baked the local sweets with dough and pure ghee to make the short-bread like biscuits called Nankhatai. In the absence of flour mills, the wheat was kept in storehouses sealed with cow dung, hand-milled by the women of the families using manual grinding stones, and the resulting coarse flour was sieved through muslin to separate the germ and bran. Refined flour and semolina were also obtained for the confections. When prohibition was introduced in the State of Bombay, and later Gujarat, toddy was replaced by a fermenting agent made of hops and potatoes. Thanks to Surat, I have enjoyed butter biscuits, nankatai, sagla bagla, hari or mawa, Saher, Mazda, Khurshed and Persian. Credit to Anil Mulchandani. Roland. Toronto.
