HKC 4: Breads

Although it is very good to pray to the Lord to supply our daily bread and in this way acknowledge our dependence on the Lord, to ask the Lord for bread is actually unnecessary, since He is already supplying food for all living entities, without our needing to pray for it. Knowing this, pure devotees, not concerned with their own self-interest, prepare to bake bread for the Lord's enjoyment and offer it to Him in love. This is just like the love of a child for his father. A father may have many sons and give them all a weekly allowance of money to spend in their own ways for their pleasure, but if one son uses the money to buy something for his father, the father is very much appreciative. Actually the money already belongs to the father, who is not in need of anything from the child, but nevertheless he cannot help being pleased when the son expresses his affection in this way. The son knows: "It is not the money which is wonderful but my father-he is wonderful." Similarly, the pure devotee is not very much concerned with making the Lord his order supplier for daily bread, but he wants to serve Krsna in love and devotion. This is Krsna consciousness.

The breads described here are very delicious as well as wholesome, and they are easy to prepare with a little practice. None of them are cooked in an oven, although regular baked bread (without yeast) is very nice to offer. All the breads described here (except bread sticks) are round and require a little skill in rolling, but it soon becomes easy to do. Chapatis, which are made from whole wheat, are the daily bread of the classical Vedic diet. Puris and chapatis are especially exciting to make because they blow up almost to bursting during the cooking. The perfect chapati should have no trace of burns on it, and the perfect puri should be white, with no brown areas. Both, however, must be fully cooked.