One Person's Bread is Another's...

Traditional bread from the Algarve. How do you cut it?

Give us this day our daily bread, but just make sure it's Portuguese. A stale item makes a return this week in the Camino a Ítaca in the latest additions to a series of articles I have written on bread. A recent headline read that bread consumption has fallen 70% (!) in the region over the past 20 years and some of the possible reasons for this are explored in the piece. Click over to read the original version in Spanish published in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

As much as it pains me to admit it, there are times when the market can be right. But I must stress that only sometimes, and of course not the free for all that some neoliberal evangelists advocate. Even if Wall Street traders, lunatic orange racists, quasi fascist Argentinian presidents with extraterrestrial haircuts and his sycophantic groupie in the Puerta del Sol would like you to believe it is always so, history and experience clearly show that this supposed axiom only holds true for them, those that already have the money in the first place.

But it was a headline, in this very newspaper, that reminded me that there are times when the market isn’t necessarily wrong. Or at least in this case, the consumer is the one who’s right. The headline intoned, “Bread consumption in the region falls 70 percent in 20 years.” The message was dramatic and signaled a sea change in society. Here we weren’t talking about a slight change in habits, but a complete revolution in the way people were eating.

Some tried to explain the change by highlighting recent lifestyle changes and the notion that more and more people were trying to lose weight by avoiding carbohydrates. Yet the pasta market continues to grow and more and more people choose pizza to treat themselves on Friday nights. No, that couldn’t be it.

Others blamed the near apocalyptic increase in the cost of living over the past few years. Electricity prices have gone through the roof and basic staples like flour have more or less doubled in price and these rises have obviously had a knock-on effect on the increased price of bread. But people continue to lavishly splurge money on much more frivolous things than bread. So no, that wasn’t the case either.

The reason was abundantly clear. It’s the product itself.

After having lived here in Extremadura for going on twenty years it’s still an ongoing mystery for me, one that rates up there with cognitive dissonance between the empty churches and sold out Virgin and Semana Santa processions. It’s something that the great Jose Ramon Alonso de la Torre and I have differed on here in the paper in the past, but that is still beyond confusing for me. How is it possible that in a land with some of the country’s most exquisite cuisine, fueled by some of the finest local ingredients, you still find yourself doomed to push sauces around your plate with the gastronomic equivalent of licking the flaking whitewash off of a crumbling adobe wall?

With few exceptions aside, like the Ecotahona del Ambroz or el Horno Tradicion and Amasamadre in Cáceres, the bread you see has become as dubious and industrial as a paella that you mind find in a vending machine on a train in Nebraska. You can say it’s from the remotest village and sprinkle flour on it to make it seem more rustic, but it’s still bread that neither rests nor sleeps and thus boasts the flavor equivalent of a napkin in a bar.

Until there is a return to bread that rests, consumption will continue to plummet. My question now is, what have people replaced bread with?