The old art of baking meets a new generation of bakers
Ranjan Amarasinghe
When an unknown and self-trained Sri Lankan chef named Tharshan Selvarajah won “Best Baguette in Paris” in 2023, the news made many Sri Lankans the world over proud and a little amazed. A Sri Lankan in Paris making artisanal bread? It sounds contrary to what we associate with Lankan cuisine but are the culinary arts in Sri Lanka an area of talent and ability deserving of greater recognition?
Ranjan Amarasinghe, Principal of the Prima Baking Training Centre (PBTC), has long known that Sri Lankans have a quiet superpower—many excel in hands-on work like carpentry, farming, cooking and baking. This potential motivates him daily to train a new generation of youth towards successful, contemporary careers in the prideful art of baking.
Chef Amarasinghe’s own culinary career spans 45 years. In the early years of his profession in tourism and hospitality, he worked as a commis chef in the former Intercontinental hotel in Colombo, then pastry chef at Ramada in Abu Dabi, and Oberoi Colombo and bakery manager at Elephant House. He later lived in Kansas, USA for a time where he completed his diploma in Bakery Science and Technology. While he says that he knew the West had much to offer, he chose to return to Sri Lanka with the intent to share the knowledge he had gained, and realize his dream to establish an accredited baking school accessible to all Sri Lankans.
“During my time we didn’t have baking schools, we were not confident and were compelled to learn under chefs who taught us methods a little bit at time.”
Upon his return, he joined Unilever Colombo as the principal of their in-house Master Line Baking Institute that offered theory-based training; however, this was not open to the public. Soon however, Chef Amarasinghe received an opportunity with Prima Sri Lanka, which owns the flour milling complex in Trincomalee completed in 1980, one of the world’s largest mills under one roof. The opportunity came in 2002 for him to establish Prima’s Baking Training Centre, the first of its kind in the country, to provide practical training and promote modern baking techniques, with specialized and globally recognized courses.
“I designed the school, acquired the equipment, developed and accredited the curriculum [with global standards] and that of Singapore. As the story goes, however, when it came time to recruit, no one wanted to join or were willing to even consider baking as a career. Even bakers did not want their children to become bakers. Young people only wanted to be doctors, lawyers or engineers. Baking was seen a practice habitually done in rural communities.”
Following the launch of PBTC came Chef Amarasinghe’s uphill endeavour of promoting the PBTC as a centre of excellence and marketing baking as a career. He did so by working with a network of baking professionals to help increase awareness; using a mobile bakery unit to travel to communities and showcase training; and by providing island-wide workshops and seminars on modern baking technology, techniques and theory. He reached out to leading schools and provided presentations to home science teachers and students. PBTC’s intent was three-fold: to improve the skills of existing bakers and develop the baking industry; to galvanize the next generation of youth to join the baking industry; and lastly to demonstrate baking as a respectable career choice.
“I have a great passion to teach whatever I know to the future generation as a social responsibility. Many of us migrate, and serve other countries, but the main reason I came back was to help our country develop this career. My passion fuelled my efforts, and I am proud to say I played a chief role in creating Sri Lanka’s first standardized baking school.
Today, Chef Amarasinghe is happy to say his challenge is the long wait list of eager parents wanting to enter their children to the PBTC. His hope is that graduating students flourish in Sri Lanka, or wherever their careers take them overseas, and that down the road they too will return to the place it began, full circle, to inspire and uplift yet another generation.
(Ruwanmali Samarakoon-Amunugama is the author of Milk, Spice and Curry Leaves; Hill Country Recipes from the Heart of Sri Lanka)
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