SIDNEY LIBANO, BAKER EXTRAORDINAIRE!

GOA IS A BAKER’S paradise courtesy its Portuguese colonial history but it’s always useful to know, at your fingertips, a few bakers who’ve not yet been bitten by the bug of commerce! Meet Sidney Libano, baker extraordinaire Why is he baker extraordinaire? He learned how to bake a fruit cake when he was all of five years old! I finally caught up with this fey young man who rarely drops in at his Libanos bakery and confection outlet at Magsons Supercentre down the Campal promenade. He just sends his goodies every morning and evening and they’re selling like the proverbial good stuff which sells quite simply because this baker cares…

After buying several goodies from the outlet I’ve come to the conclusion that this is one young baker who is conscious about the changing ways of making more health-conscious bread and an array of cakes and savories. It’s not a commercial proposition yet, he says, but he’d like to experiment with a whole lot more freshly baked produce and food in the near future because more and more people are buying food to take home for a snack or complement a meal. It would be easy to give in gross commercialization but there’s a conscience to deal with. So when he bakes a simple whole wheat loaf of bread he uses 100 per cent whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, a little fat like butter. No fancy improvers, whiteners, softeners either so that his produce enjoys an artificially long shelf life. If you don’t eat his bread within a day or two it spoils – it’s that good.

Baker Sidney Libano. . . makes a mouthwatering array of plain and traditional cakes.

His chocolate cakes too are genuinely chocolate cakes, “I don’t caramel sugar to colour the cake chocolate!” That’s what many run-of-the-mill bakers do, just as “brown bread” is not genuinely brown whole wheat bread but caramalised white refined maida bread. Sidney’s been a baker from the time he turned all of five years old, he quipped. He grew up with a fairly large traditional Portuguese family from Porvorim, he has five sisters and two brothers, “And it was my sister Celina who thought me to bake a fruit cake when I was five years old….” He took to the experience and was soon baking cakes for relatives and friends of the family, sometimes on order, “I remember baking 50 small fruit cakes during the Christmas of 1984-85 and earned Rs.700!” His first earnings were a thrill to remember but he had donated the money to Mother Theresa’s home. The secret to baking a good fruit cake, he responds to a query, is to soak the fruit in brandy at least upto three months…

There was no looking back for him. Later on after schooling and college was over he joined up for a bakery course at the Catering Institute at Porvorim but ended up teaching the students! He could have joined the faculty but he had his own muse to follow. “I’ve taught many students and bakers how to bake the cakes I make and I’ve not hidden any secrets,” Sidney confesses disarmingly, “In life the more I’ve shared the more I’ve been given…” His confectionary outlet at Magson Supercentre, Libanos, is named for his family, “It’s my gift to them!” Someone who has influenced him a great deal is a German friend called Carla Wiedeking, a friend of the late Mother Theresa, “Carla is in charge of the mission in Germany…she has adopted 11 children from India and they’re all well settled now.” This remarkable lady has in fact found homes in Germany for 2,000 orphans, according to Sidney. She is the daughter of a famous German scientist who took his family of a daughter (Carla), son and wife, to live in cellar in secret…“because Hitler had commanded his services during the World War II years and he didn’t like Hitler!”

But this is about Sidney Libano and not Carla Wiedeking. He has visited her in Germany and picked up many useful things about baking because Germans are great bakers. Says Sidney, he owes Carla for learning how to make traditional original recipes from Germany, France…“One day taste my black forest and compare it with other black forests in Panjim!” The much-loved black forest cake is of German origin and is made with a biscuit base, “It is a rolled and baked concoction of cherries and kirch (cherry liqueur)…a double cream layered cake which is less sweet, has cinnamon, chocolate, and…is full of liqueur!” Germans like their cakes less sweet in general.

Sidney Libano’s roll-call of cakes makes my mouth water…the Austrian sacher torte which is special because it is made with no flour at all but biscuit crumbs, it’s a crunchy chocolate cake; there’s a no-bake frozen cake; there’re cakes one may steam (he says all cakes can be steamed); there’s poppy seed strudel which is like a Swiss roll; honey cake (very moist and nice!); buckwheat cake; an interesting sounding apricot rosette cake (made with bread dough and very flavorful)…his lemon cheesecake is popular, “I also make a very health conscious cake with fresh curd and fresh fruit, it’s a very simple and delicious recipe.” One of these days, I tell him, teachme to bake just his plain butter cake! Take down the recipe, he says, and dictates….

PLAIN BUTTER CAKE INGREDIENTS : 250 g butter; 250 g powder sugar; 5 eggs; 250 g maida (refined white flour); half tsp baking powder; 1 tsp vanilla essence METHOD : Use all ingredients at room temperature. To begin beat the butter for five minutes until it is light and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar, a tablespoon at a time and beat well till it is absorbed. Beat for a further five minutes. Beat 1 egg in a bowl, add vanilla essence and beat well. Gradually add this to the butter mix and beat for half-a- minute. Break second egg in bowl, beat well and add to the cake mixture with half-a- minute’s beating. Repeat till all the eggs are used up. Mix baking powder with maida and sieve thrice. Divide the flour in three parts. Take the first part and gradually fold into the cake mix. Fold in gently and smoothly without beating it at all. Repeat likewise with the other two portions of flour. You’ve got your cake batter and it is ready for baking. Grease a cake pan lightly with butter and dust with flour, pour in the batter and bake in a preheated oven at 150 deg.C for approximately 50 minutes or a toothpick inserted in cake emerges clean (if it is sticky the cake is not yet baked perfectly). Take out of oven, cool before removing on to a cake plate or bowl. It’s a plain butter cake which is delicious all on its own but you may serve it with custard, fruit salad and/or jelly.   NOTE: It helps to have a round cake pan with a 10 or 11-inch diameter.

 

TIDBITS TO cleanse the inner body before a busy day, squeeze a quarter of a fresh lemon in a glass of warm water, add a teaspoon of honey, and sip it. It works wonders! Little by little…. ANY large-scale accomplishment is achieved only when tackled little by little. Be patient and tackle only one thing at a time. Then watch the big picture unfold. Breakfast on the run… FOR a delicious, quick and satisfying breakfast, blend skim or soy milk with a teaspoon each of lecithin powder (helps the nerves) and psyllium husks (contain fibre), a mango or a banana, and a teaspoon of honey. (Taken from “Take Care of Yourself…Inspiration and advice for body and soul…” by Penelope Sach, Penguin booklets.)

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