Bread and Rusk… From the palaces of Knossos to modern wood ovens of Crete. Katerina Karsioti presents 5+1 distinguished personalities.
History has been written for centuries now…
An ancient nourishment, an ancient gift narrating endless floured pages with many stories, findings, manners and customs, recipes and techniques.
Bread and rusks conceal a true “heavy” tale that nurtured entire civilizations in times of prosperity but also in times of decadence.
In this case, this very commodity always stood tall and supplied the people with the nutrients they really needed to continue their daily lives.
Ιt’s existence is known from the moment that humanity caught the first seed of grain in its hands.That is why there is no more blessed food than bread.
This is proved by art, archaeology, religions, the decrees of royals… then whoever allotted grain in his warehouse was also the powerful one, one who could live and evolve.
Bread is an important and just as simple need of life that began when the Egyptians started crushing wheat grains and make a porridge with Nile water opulent in natural forms of yeast.
This dough was the bread that the Greeks later on perfected. Herodotus mentions that in Egypt bread was used for payment, that is, as a kind of currency.
Barley black bread for workers, wheat flour bread for officials.
Reaching in enchanting ancient Greece with the rural population, the essence of food was bread.
They literally adored it, the goddess Dimitra was adorned with sheaves, praying before heading off to knead, as the divine frenzies act by crossing the dough until present, as soon as kneading starts.
Everyday bread was produced in the houses of ancient Athens, they kneaded barley with water, for the holidays they kneaded wheat with water, the bread.
The Greeks were the ones who invented the built-in open oven and in fact seven centuries later there were 72 varieties of bread in Athens.
They were simple recipes like the one with onion bread, because olives and onions were basic elements of the Athenian diet.
The Minoans had a tradition and ample history… in bread and rusk
What an integral and important part of Cretan culture and nutrition from these two goods, bread and rusk.
The condition is impressive with the first samples of a plain barley bread originating from antiquity and of course you encounter them in the Minoan findings.
The traditional ways of kneading and baking are reproduced to this day.
A real important part of ritual and almost mysticism. A typical example is Eptazymo.
Both bread and its variants in Crete are related to the daily diet.
At the same time, if you converse to the old people of the island, they will definitely speak about the cult and customary breads such as the Christmas bread, the loaf bread, the baptismal bread and the well-known gamokouloura and xombliasta.
From the palaces of Knossos to the menus of restaurants and hotels…
In Minoan Crete and on the houses roofs the inhabitants laid their tables with the local treasures of the fertile land.
The bread held the most leading position and was uniquely combined with the rest that also had a strong say in the Cretan table.
These were mainly olives, legumes, grapes, mushrooms, fish, wine as well as the essential sweets such as figs, quinces and honey.
Minoan cuisine with flavors of almost 5,000 years old not only survived the overwhelming change of the world but conveyed its narrative and promoted the traded goods of rich nutritional value high and with an evolutionary trend.
Bread has been – for thousands of years – “fermented” with human history: with its food, its survival, its religious worship, but also its small-large gastronomic pleasures.
Over the centuries, cosmogonic changes have taken place in our way of life, our taste buds and habits.
Bread, however, has remained and remains a “life support” and a fundamental element of our diet: beyond racial, religious, geographical, social, cultural differences.
It has simply adapted – and is constantly adapting – to scientific, technological developments, dietary trends and the peculiarities of places and times.
Bread is the dominant element of the table in all cultures, older and newer, and the way it is used is ritualistic and symbolic.
It is offered at all the milestones of human life, as a symbol of beneficial power.
The famous eptazymo or ftazymo bread and rusk “echoes” Crete…
The folklore “relates”that Eastern Crete is known mainly for the eptazymo bread and rusk. There in Emparos.
In the Plain, in Mirabello.
In Vianno, in Ierapetra and the Lasithi plateau, this type of bread already smells sweet of musk from the wood oven.
In mainland Greece they testify that these are the most beautiful breads in the country, with their tight texture, special personality and deep sweet and at the same time sour taste to characterize it.
The word eptazymo, although it refers to “seven times leavened bread” is a corruption of the word “aftozymo”.
So aftozymo, up to ftazymo and finally eptazymo!
This lavish bread is delicate during its preparation but intoxicatingly tasty and odoriferous.
It acquires its own technique without effort but…manner.
However, in order to achieve its fluffing, requires knowledge, observation and abundant love. It needs you by its side.
Doing so you will get out of the wooden oven…a pure gem.
Of course, plain rusks are just as delicious as eptazymo rusks. If you have not tasted them, dash.
Bread with pure… wholemeal flour
Or the most authentic bread!
It takes you back to antiquity. And this is because it is the bread of the Ancient Greeks. And this is not accidental.
Zea flour bread is completely pure, nutritious and homemade without any preservatives and with a resilient baking mass.
It has an actual flour with a lower gluten content (by 50%) as well as a substance strengthening the immune system.
Barley guarantees the most special rusk…
The importance of the rusk in the Cretan diet is not only massive but also long-lasting.
However, the opposite does not apply to mainland Greece.
Rusks in Greece assemble a large repository of memories, stories and gastronomic secrets.
Rusk is also the food that nourished humanity, which like meat had the ability to be preserved for months so that people could have food.
Even today when somebody makes homemade rusks one can prepare a large quantity since it is a commodity that can be consumed even after a very long time.
It is a product of Protected Geographical Indication and the one that paved the way and established the use of rusks in general, as part of the daily diet.
Barley rusk has even been suggested for medicinal use, due to the multiple healing properties of the dietary fiber it contains.
With an extremely hard and crunchy texture, has an irregular shape and is ideal as an accompaniment but also as main dish as long as it is garnished with fresh tomato, extra virgin olive oil, kefalograviera, mizithra or feta but even with fresh fruit.
It has such properties that can be consumed dry or wet but without getting muddy and losing its crunchiness.
The Yeast Wheat Bread… of your childhood…
The favorite bread that only a grandmother knows how to knead well, methodically, an absolute ritual.
The bread with its cap is really “golden” as it has been adored by everyone.
Wheat bread is usually made from hard yellow flour, it has a crunchy crust and a firm crumb as it is decorated with sesame seeds for garnish.
You enjoy the fermented wheat bread to the maximum either in loaf or in a bloomer.
The Carob Rusk makes the round of the mainland…
Nutritional value of huge and unique nutritional peculiarity.
It is a “gem” in Crete’s diet, which stands very high in the choices and suggestions of the island.
It is no coincidence that carob has caught the eyes of the gastronomic and confectionery industry as it is lifted off through different products and recipes.
In the most creative way you can run into it in favorite choices and dishes or you have already met it.
Carob has its own personality and temperament because it is simply a fruit of many “carats”.
The carob rusk is a way to enjoy the precious fruit which is transformed into carob flour, a flour with a pleasant, sweet taste that is used to make bread, biscuits, cakes and rusks.
Dakos, the gastronomic treasure
Dakos is kneaded much like bread, but sliced, baked a second time to dry.
The ancients called it “dipiriti bread”, meaning bread, baked twice.
The Cretan rusk has been characterized as a Product of Geographical Indication (PGI).
It is met in modern recipes, with the basic variation of the traditional salad, the owl that displays the rusk in the best way, beyond the geographical boundaries of the island.
Bread is the dominant element of the table in all cultures, older and younger, and the way it is used is ritual and symbolic. It is offered at all milestones in human life, as a symbol of beneficial power…
The presentation was created for the Thigaterra Editorial of the Thigaterra restaurant, The Art Of Slow Food
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