Goats and soda: NPR

Mumbai, India – Every morning, when the city of Mumbai sleeps, the staff of Yazdani bakery Wake up to knead the dough, cut it into small pieces and put it in the oven. At dawn, they are ready with their most popular offer: a thousand pieces of pav, which steals shelves from the opening of the bakery.

The pav is a soft and soft bread, with a crisp top and a distinct smoked flavor. It looks like a parker house roll, except that there is no egg in the pav dough. The word comes from the Portuguese word for bread – Dash. He arrived in India with Portuguese merchants who sailed in neighboring ports over 600 years ago and brought with them a taste of the house.

It became a food light in the 19th century, when the port city emerged like a textile center, attracting workers from neighboring towns and villages to its cotton rotation and weaving factories.

“PAV is what Bombay working class workers ate, in particular those who were far from home without the infrastructure to create Indian food for them,” said the anthropologist of food based in Mumbai Kurush DalalReferring to the city by its old name.

A baker in Mumbai weighs the dough which will become the beloved paved bread.

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Since then, the population of Mumbai has cultivated ten times during the last century to 12 million. This teeming city is home to Bollywood, stock markets, billionaire industrialists and millions of migrants, blue and white necklaces, living in slums and skyscrapers. Mumbai's textile factories are today shells from their past, invaded by wild figs.

But Pav remains a basic food in the working class. A six -time stack – called a ladi – costs less than 25 cents.

A misty future of bread

But now Pav's survival is in danger.

In February, the government announcement that he would prohibit the wood bakeries across the city in the next six months. The order occurred a few months after the publication of the Bombay environmental action group, based in Mumbai, a study Affirming that during a year, the pollution of the wooden bakeries of 1,000 people from Mumbai was as harmful to each resident as smoking 400 cigarettes.

But criticism say that this is a case of poorly placed priorities – to choose the little guy. “Pollution emitted by these bakeries is nothing compared to pollution that construction sites contribute or road repair sites contribute,” said the former representative of the municipal council Makarand Narwekar.

The Bakers of the Yazdani Bakery in Mumbai kneaded.

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He underlines the massive youthful cure company by the civic body of Mumbai to redo the roads of the city, which only aggravated dust and traffic. A study by the Indian group of the Climate Group of Living of the Sciences Almost half from 2024.

Ravi Andhale, head of the pollution control council, recognizes that wood bakeries are not the worst offenders in Mumbai. According to the Bombay Environmental Action Group Study, they only contribute 3% of the pollution of the city's particles – referring to the material in the air less than 10 micrometers in diameter). But “just because your share is small – you shouldn't do anything – is not acceptable,” he said.

And the main author of the study that highlighted the pollution of wooden bakeries, this is one of the reasons why they are targeted is that it is simply easier to solve this small slice of the problem.

“Regarding the pollution of construction, infrastructure and vehicles, they have a lot of complexities,” explains Hema Ramani, a environmental consultant who works on legal and political issues. “This is why we have said, look at the faster, faster and smaller transitions that can occur. Then you go to the older ones.”

Ramani says that she does not want bakeries to close the store, only moved to a cleaner fuel like natural gas or electricity. The government can help, she say, by subsidizing equipment or transitional costs.

But Nasir Ansari, president of the Bombay Bakers Association, says that it would increase the cost of the PAV by more than half. “The PAV is often the food of the working class. Even a small price increase makes a huge difference. A few months ago, we increased the price of a six -rup stack” – a few cents. “We always had customers asking me why I did it.”

A baker places the dough in a stove in the fire at the Yazdani bakery.

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Why Pav is beloved

It is not only a question of cost, say the PAV bakers. Wood bread is part of the cosmopolitan heritage of Mumbai, a mixture of indigenous and colonial traditions.

This original Portuguese bread is now consumed with a snack of fried potatoes called “Vada”, a puree of butter vegetables called “Bhaji”, or spicy chicken or lamb hatch called keema. “These are also large ships to clean all kinds of sautés and currys – and almost everything that is Indian,” said Dalal.

A baker transports fresh breads in the Yazdani bakery kitchen.

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Perzon Zend, owner of the Yazdani bakery, says that losing the paving of wood fire would take something intangible from the cosmopolitan inheritance of Mumbai. He underlines his own family history: the ancestors of Zend came from Iran over a hundred years ago – and set up the most emblematic Iranian restaurants in Mumbai – where their key product is a bread of Portuguese origin. It was an excellent deal for the family. He draws his potbelly to demonstrate.

“I really want Bombay's own air,” said Zend. “But I don't want to be the smallest and simplest target.”

And he thinks that the cooking method is the key to success. “You can't beat the wood fire,” he said. “In America, you smoke the chops and this smoke is everything. That's like that with Pav too.” Those made in electric ovens, he says, “taste cardboard”.