Bake That:(from left) Antonio, Reginaldo, Ravindra and Rose at their ancestral home, which houses the bakery, at Ambora.INSIDE THE ancestral home of the Antaos in Ambora, in south Goa, the wood-fired oven is heated as early as 4 am as the family prepares batches of its famed products — eclairs, in which the cream used is a family secret; the double-baked biscuits known as Melting Moments, which have patrons visiting as early as 6 am; and a plum cake that remains moist even after 21 days. Jila bakery was started in 1972 by Jose Antao, who returned from Mumbai after his son Antonio chided, “You are famous outside Goa. No one in our village knows you.”
Having left Goa at the age of 14, Jose worked at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, at first cleaning pastry moulds and then learning to bake under pâtissiers and “fold puff pastry properly” under Italian chefs in the early 1930s.
Known as “pudding wala” in Mumbai during the 1950s, Jose later even served as the chief confectioner for the royals of Pratapgarh and Miraj, and had his own kitchen at Star Bakery, in central Mumbai, where, according to Antao family lore, “the Parsi proprietor, too, asked his permission before entering his kitchen”.
Jose died in 2005, but his legacy remains strong in the quality of the bakery’s products and the strict discipline he inculcated in his children since an early age. Brothers Reginaldo, 64, Antonio, 75, and Joao, 60 — along with Rose, Reginaldo’s wife, 58 — have ensured this. “We make these recipes honestly every day, as he taught us. This bakery is our father’s journey outside Goa,” says Antonio. “He was a strict father, a perfectionist. I would wake up before him to prep, when I trained under him. If anything went wrong, I would quietly dump it all into our dry well, before he woke up, and start again,” recalls Reginaldo.
The Antaos refuse to expand the business, despite owning premises in Margao, Goa’s commerical capital. At least for the next one generation, the bakery will remain in the ancestral house. Reginaldo’s son Ravindra, a mechanical engineering by training, may some day mechanise production at the bakery. “They (the older generation) do not agree. But by 11 am, it’s sometimes painful to see customers go back empty handed, as everything is over,” says Ravindra, 27.
Since the bakery opened nearly five decades ago, it has attracted dedicated patronage from locals and tourists. Its sugar-coated panka (biscuit) is known among locals by several names — angel wings, dog’s ears, palmiers, even Loutolim biscuits, though the bakery falls in Ambora village.
Famous customers have included Ratna Pathak Shah (who, the family says, bought Geneva pastry for her husband, Naseeruddin Shah) and Orhan Pamuk (apple strudel). The family jokes about the time another famous man walked into their living room and patiently waited for his parcel of eclairs. “The entire village came running after his car left, to tell us he was Sachin Tendulkar,” says Reginaldo, “I did think he looked familiar.”
