India, Sept. 25 -- It's such a relief to finally be able to get good bread in India. The rise in bread quality is one of the great undocumented success stories of India's food scene.

Until the beginning of this century (and perhaps even later), bread was broadly divided into two categories. There was mass-produced bread that was relatively cheap and dominated the market. It was easily available, and such companies as Britannia became household names because of the ubiquity of their loaves. And then there was the fancy bread from five-star hotels, which cost a lot more and was passed off as vastly superior in quality to the industrial stuff. (I refer to Western-style bread. Pao is another, more complicated story).

In truth, neither categ...