Chain List

Chain List

The disputed region of India that bakes bread to rival France [Chain List]

In Indian-administered Kashmir, long before the morning call to prayer reverberates across neighborhoods, the city of Srinagar’s kandurs, or bakers, have fired up their tandoor ovens.

Located in the snowy Himalayas, at the northern tip of India, this disputed region between India and Pakistan is a paradise of snowy glaciers, ice-blue lakes, fir-lined mountains, and gushing, stormy rivers. So famed is its beauty that Mogul Emperor Jehangir once remarked, “If there is a heaven on earth, it’s here, it’s here, it’s here.”

Kashmir’s rich history includes the legacy of Buddhist pilgrims, Islamic rulers, Sikh dynasts and Central Asian Silk Road traders, who brought their arts, crafts and rituals to this treasured land that remains one of the world’s most militarized regions, marred with decades of conflict and violence.

But beyond the troubled state’s borders, few talk of the artisans who work with flour, water and ghee (clarified butter) to give Kashmiris their daily bread. The region’s rich bread culture is a patchwork of the legacy of the Silk Road, an ancient trade route that connected Europe, the Middle East and Asia along the way. While rice is the staple that’s cooked in households across Kashmir, bread is what drives the local community and economy. Local bakeries churn out roughly 10 kinds of bread a day, each with its own peculiar ritual and time of day to be consumed.

With so much traditional knowledge guarded and passed down through generations, Kashmir’s bread culture could qualify for a UNESCO intangible heritage listing and possibly rival France’s boulangerie tradition. So why does no one talk about this culinary legacy?