Walnut and Pumpkin Seed Bread

 This 100% whole wheat bread recipe adapted from BBC Good Food magazine is packed with pumpkin and flax seeds.

Recently a one star review on my business page on zomato (an indian website on the same lines as yelp) just reconfirmed my belief that most people these days are reviewing for the sake of appearing cool and just do not have the patience to understand somebody else’s situation.

So the whole thing started on the Monday that went by. I had an order that I was busy working with. My phone was in the other room on charge. Generally if I am working on an order I do not keep my phone with me, because while baking I know I can not take a call lest I forget all about my cake in the oven. And sometimes while rushing through orders it becomes really difficult to attend phone calls. The moment I get free I call the people whose calls I have missed. If my phone is with me I message in between saying I am tied up and will call soon. That day though my phone wasn’t on me so I only saw the calls an hour or so later. On calling the first number I had missed two calls from, the person on the other line informed me that she had already placed an order with someone else for a cake. I said no problem, hopefully next time. I called the other number and it turned out to be the same person. This time I apologized and explained that I was busy with an order and again mentioned that hopefully next time I can bake for her. All this happened in a span of one and half hour of her initially trying to get in touch with me.

The next thing I know the said caller had left a one star review on Zomato saying that I had shitty customer service and that I was misguiding people with a phony address. I have no idea what she meant about a phony address, because no where I have mentioned my address just my locality. I do not want to put my home address on a public forum for obvious reasons. And just because I did not take her call she goes around slandering my business and my customer service. I get it. It can be frustrating trying an establishment number and have no one pick up. But I am not an establishment with a customer service team. I manage everything from baking, decorating, accounts, handling clients on my own. Besides trying to have a personal life as well. Even after explaining this to her that I was a home baker and I do not have people to attend my calls as a reply to her review, she replied that I never apologized to her for missing her calls (which was not true and even if it was, did that give her reason enough to slander my business with shitty customer service?). After that I saw no point in paying any more heed to what she had to say.

I am part of many food groups on facebook. And everyday see people leaving reviews for restaurants. I have seen negative reviews going viral and the management being the brunt of negative publicity, sometimes because of no fault of theirs. Case in point (as pointed by someone on one of the groups that I am a part of) the milk/paneer picture that did the rounds on social media where the women claimed of the company selling expired stuff. Turned out she did not follow instructions on the back and was actually falsely accusing.

I have seen it happen here in the blogosphere as well. People changing the whole recipe given and then blaming the original poster for posting a screwed up recipe. There are genuine cases, I agree. There is shitty service out there. There are bad products and while I pray that I never dish out a bad product, everybody does have a bad day and there is a possibility that one day I might screw up too. And in that case if somebody leaves a negative review I would take that as constructive criticism and do my best to rectify it. But to expect an apology for missing a call is something I really do not understand. We all hear about how the management mistreated the customers, but sometimes the customers forget to mention how they themselves abused the management for small things, or how they threaten with bad reviews, or how they have no patience or consideration for certain unforeseen circumstances. Yes the customer is always right, but some people do push that adage to an intolerable extent.

And this is what I want to say to people out there and strive to follow myself. Be a little patient. Be a little understanding. Leave constructive criticism and don’t slander without trying your best to resolve the issue with the management/owner first. Before posting on social media sites, try to have a word with the management or the chef and I am sure they would love to better the wrong if it’s their mistake. When you read reviews of restaurants and places, all one star reviews might not be the fault of the owner or restaurant. And all the things that go viral may have another side to the story which gets missed out. So before jumping to conclusions and supporting the consumer, consider the possibility that there might be another angle that might be being overlooked. Social media has a lot of power and understand that you might be responsible for something good going down the drain for an honest mistake and possibly for no reason at all.

With that said now to the recipe today. I found this gem of a recipe in BBC Good Food magazine March Issue. The moment I saw it I wanted to try it.

I love making bread at home. My current favorite is the stuffed mushroom and spinach bread recipe that I had posted recently. But that has certain steps to it and though it takes the same amount of time- I make the filling while the bread is proofing, it does involve more kitchen time at my end. Plus that bread can not be sliced and one can’t make sandwiches with it. This bread can. And this one is 100% whole wheat. And is filled with pumpkin seeds, of which I have no dearth of in my pantry. I added flax seeds for good measure. The original recipe uses a mix of hemp, linseeds, pumpkin and sesame seeds. I used what I had on my shelves. You can too.

To the the people who shy from bread baking, there really isn’t much to it, and though I don’t make it as often as I would like, when I do make and enjoy a slice of homemade bread I wonder why I don’t bake breads more often. The initial kneading takes 10 minutes of your time. And then its just proofing and shaping after an hour. And you get the added benefit of knowing what all went in your bread. When it says 100% whole wheat, it indeed is 100% whole wheat.