Bakarwadi is a traditional crispy, deep-fried, disc-shaped, sweet and spicy

snack A snack is a small portion of Human food, food generally Eating, eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including Food packaging, packaged snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at ho ...

popular in the western cities of

Pune Pune ( ; , ISO 15919, ISO: ), previously spelled in English as Poona (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1978), is a city in the state of Maharashtra in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan plateau in Western ...

Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...

and

Vadodara Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is a city situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district. The city is named for its abundance of banyan ...

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

in India. It was already popular before 1960 when these were not Gujarat or Maharashtra states; they were both a part of Bombay State, and both cultures added their own flavors to each other's recipes.

History

It is believed that ''bhakar'' comes from

bhakri Bhakri () is a round flatbread often eaten in the cuisines of the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Karnataka in India. Bhakri is prepared using jowar or bajra, which is coarser than a regular wheat chapati. Bhakri can be either sof ...

and once rolled with masala stuffing (''vadi'') and cut and fried, it becomes bhakar-vadi. Chitale Bandhu of

and Jagdish-Farsan of

popularized the snack by distributing it nationally and internationally. It was popularized by Raghunathrao Chitale, a Marathi businessman. In the 1970s, Narsinha Chitale tasted bakarwadi, a popular Gujarati snack made by his neighbor. The only difference was that the neighbor made a "Nagpuri" variant of the snack. Popularly known as pudachi vadi, this "Nagpuri" variant was an extremely spicy roll, whereas the Gujarati staple snack had more garlic and onions. The amalgamation of the spicy pudachi vadi and the shape of Gujarati bakarwadi is the Chitale bakarwadi. "They combined the spiciness of the Nagpuri pudachi vadi and the shape of the Gujarati bakarwadi and deep-fried it for more crispiness," says Indraneel. The recipe, perfected by Narasinha’s elder sister-in-law, Vijaya, and wife, Mangala, went on sale in 1976. This Chitale-Bakarwadi was launched in the market in 1976 (Chitale Dairy since 1939, Chitalebandhu Mithaiwale since 1950 and Chitale-Bakarwadi since 1976), and shortly the brand saw a massive surge in demand for this snack. Jagdish Foods (Since 1945) (Jagdish Bhakharwadi) is from 1945 till date in Gujarat and across the world. Many other brands like

Haldiram's Haldiram Snacks Food Pvt. Ltd. , doing business as Haldiram's is an Indian Multinational corporation, multinational Fast-food restaurant, fast-food restaurant Chain store, chain, founded in 1937, as a Sweets from the Indian subcontinent, confect ...

also started to manufacture this snack.

Recipe

Bakarwadi is made from

gram flour Besan or gram flour is a pulse flour made from chana dal or chickpea flour (split Bengal gram) or brown/ ''kaala chana'', a chickpea. It is a staple ingredient in the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent, including Indian, Bangladeshi, Burmese, ...

dough made into spirals stuffed with a mixture of

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (biology), family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, ...

poppy seed Poppy seed is an oilseed obtained from the poppy plant (''Papaver somniferum''). The tiny, kidney-shaped seeds have been harvested from dried seed pods by various civilizations for thousands of years. It is still widely used in many countries, ...

s and

sesame seed Sesame (; ''Sesamum indicum'') is a plant in the genus ''Sesamum'', also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for it ...

s. It is then fried until it gets crispy. It can be stored for weeks and enjoyed as an evening snack.

In popular culture

''Bhakharwadi'', a TV serial, aired on

Sony SAB Sony SAB is an Indian Hindi-language general entertainment pay television channel owned by Culver Max Entertainment Culver Max Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., Trade name, trading as Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN or SPNI), is an Indian media ...

from 2019 to 2020. The comedy revolves around two neighboring families in

—one

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India **Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...

and the other Gujarati—that differ in their attitudes towards the snack.

References

External links

{{commons Indian desserts Indian snack foods Indian fast food Gujarati cuisine Maharashtrian cuisine

History

Recipe

In popular culture

See also

References

External links