07 Feb 2025 6 min read

Friday Bread Basket 2/7/25

Groats and millet for the table

‘Baking the Bread,’ Anders Zorn, 1889

Hello from the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain.

Bread, not broken

Siranush Sargsyan writes in The Armenian Weekly about a group of women displaced from Artsakh in 2023 who are rebuilding their lives in Yerevan by baking the breads of their lost home:

Following the nearly 10 months of starvation, siege and forced displacement in 2023, Kristin Balayan, the head of Milagri Foundation, has been working with this community in Yerevan. For the last four months, the women have been learning how to bake and sell a variety of healthy breads using different flours, including gluten-free options, and infusing them with unique flavors.

Choosing to bake bread was not an accident. “For us, the idea of bread was especially important during the blockade when there was a shortage of [it]. When every kind of food finished but there was still bread, people did not break. But when the bread ran out, people broke,” Balayan told the Weekly.

This program is implemented in partnership with the Embassy of the Netherlands in Armenia and focuses on human rights and gender equality, particularly aimed at engaging mothers of children with developmental challenges, who are considered doubly vulnerable, as noted by Larisa Harutyunyan, the political and economic affairs officer at the embassy.

Harutyunyan added that they initially chose to bake sourdough bread to ensure the high quality of the food. The use of sourdough reflects a commitment to health and nutrition, allowing participants to create wholesome products that not only nourish but also connect them to their cultural roots.

From matzoh to tortilla

recently shared an essay about flour tortillas, in which she reveals that flour tortillas may be an evolution of the matzoh recipes brought to Mexico by Portuguese Jews fleeing Spain in the 16th Century:

Bread is identity: it carries the most intrinsic sense of home, of childhood memories, of nurture; it defines entire nations and provides a sense of nationality or of the collective self. Think of Matzah, Naan, Pitta, Tortillas, all intrinsically linked to a country’s gastronomic heritage.

It is not surprising that when one looks into the evolution of bread through history, so much of it, in whatever shape or form it is presented, is linked to the evolution of civilization itself. But what happens when evolution results in fusions or new varieties? - Is that sense of national identity diluted?

Take the flour tortilla, deliciously soft, almost velvety from the addition of lard, butter or vegetable fat to the wheat flour and water. With about 500 years of history behind it, it is a great example of how this humble, flat and originally unleavened bread has transcended borders and boundaries and has become a staple not only in Northern Mexico and in the United States but all over the world.

When the Spanish Conquistadores arrived to Mexican shores, they found the Aztecs had been making corn ‘tlaxcalli’ for about 3.5 thousand years; these ‘tlaxcalli’, or as they were ‘baptised’ there after as ‘tortillas’, were boasting a pedigree as far back as Olmec’s time (c 1200 BC to c 400 BC). The term tortilla was given by the Spanish who had mistakenly identified the ‘tlaxcalli’ as a ‘torta’, which was a sort of Spanish cake or ‘small cake’. Soon after their arrival, the conquistadores introduced wheat into Mexico. It is believed that wheat was grown for the first time by a servant of the conquistador Hernan Cortez after finding a few grains mixed in a sack of rice. By 1534, only thirteen years after the conquest, Mexico was producing important amounts of wheat. The first official mill was licensed in 1525 somewhere in what is now Mexico City. They lost no time implementing systems to grow it in the new world. Most of the production of wheat during the XVI century was destined to make bread and communion wafers.

When Portuguese Jews coming from Spain established themselves in the Northwest of the country in the later part of the XVI century, they attempted to make Matzah, an unleavened, flatbread central to their passover rituals, by using the coarse, broken down wheat available in the region, mixed with water. It is believed that this bread became the father of the modern flour tortilla, which now graces tables all over the world.

Flour tortillas were also a political and socio-economical choice. In the centre of Mexico, native people worshiped ‘Chicomecoatl’ the goddess of maize and nature; the Aztecs believed that corn was a gift from the gods, so it was ingrained in their rituals and believes; so naturally, corn tortillas were the only choice for them. The newcomers, however, saw corn as a peasant food, clearly identifying the consumer as ‘uncivilised’, while wheat, on the other hand, was a sign of good breeding, Spanish heritage and good standing in society. The choice of grain on your table mattered, as it determined who you were and where you came from.

Yes, Kueh

Two of my favorite bakers and cookbook authors—Dan Lepard and Christopher Tan—recently met to chat about Christopher’s latest book, NerdBaker 2: Tales from the Yeast Indies, one that I have gushed about here already:

This book was birthed from a few strongly interconnected key motivations. Firstly it was a COVID pandemic baby, conceived from not being able to do much but stay at home and bake, fuelled by all the inspiration and encouragement I soaked up while seeing how bakers connected and shared with each other online and through other remote means.

I wanted “Tales from the Yeast Indies” overall to celebrate the ways in which Asian baking cultures have developed their own idioms and have diverged from European or American baking, even though those have seeded Asian baking in the past. Having connected with many of my overseas readers through Instagram during the pandemic, I wanted to introduce them to what may be entirely new paradigms for those unfamiliar with how we bake over here. At the same time, I also wanted to set down in detail for readers in Singapore and Malaysia recipes for our very traditional and beloved local items – like the soft loaves we use for kaya toast, and really proper restaurant-style char siew bao, and the deep-fried breads – which I have never seen fully explained in English before.

Another catalyst was watching the first season of The Great Australian Bake Off on which you were a judge, Dan – I noticed that the Aussie contestants seemed to be much more au fait with Asian and Middle Eastern baking mores and techniques than the British contestants on the original UK series. And then of course seeing wonderful books by authors like Bryan Ford (with “New World Sourdough”) and Abi Balingit (with “Mayumu – Filipino American Desserts Remixed”) proves that there is a hunger among readers to learn about global baking traditions. I think that really curious and intrepid bakers (for whom “Tales From The Yeast Indies” is named!) will always want to vault over map boundaries.

The interview is part of a new series that Dan is doing on his blog that is well worth following. Be sure to check out his excellent new podcast, No Set Menu, where this interview may also appear soon.