Bread in Spain (pan in Spanish) is a staple food that accompanies daily meals year-round. The Iberian Peninsula has some of the greatest bread diversity in Europe. Spanish food writer José Carlos Capel estimates there are 315 Spanish breads. The most popular, (baguette-shaped bread), makes up 75% of bread consumption. Bread serves historical, cultural, religious, and mythological purposes.
Wheat is the most cultivated cereal in the country, as it can withstand the interior's dry climate. While brown bread is preferred in northern Europe, white flour is preferred in southern Europe for its spongier and lighter texture. North of the Pyrenees, rye flour and other grains (like the French méteil) are commonly mixed, as well as whole-wheat flour. Whole-wheat bread has recently become popular in Spain due to interest in healthier eating. Throughout Spanish history (especially the Franco regime), rye, barley, buckwheat, or whole-wheat breads were considered food for the poor.
Candeal, bregado or sobado bread has a long tradition in Castile, Andalusia, Leon, Extremadura, Araba, Valencia, and Zaragoza. This bread is made with flour, a durum wheat endemic to Iberia and the Balearic Islands. Dough is flattened with a rolling pin or a two-cylinder '. Similar hard-dough bread is also found in Italy and Portugal (pão sovado, regueifa).
Bread is used in many Spanish recipes, such as ajoblanco, preñaos, migas, pa amb tomàquet, salmorejo, and torrijas. Bread became important in traditional Spanish cuisine, especially in inland Spain, as an efficient use of ingredients. Historically, the Spanish have been known to be high consumers of bread, though bread consumption in the country has declined and Spanish bakeries have reoriented. People eat less and lower-quality bread, while the baker's job is becoming mechanized and tradition is simplifying, according to Capel and author Ibán Yarza.
Bread was produced in the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans. The Iberian people mastered the fermentation process, and cultivated wheat and other cereals such as einkorn and barley. Bakeries became a public establishment due to influence Greek, and Romans introduced improved structures such as mills and ovens. Numerous ' ('bread stamps') have been found throughout Hispania. These were used by Romans to "mark" bread for religious reasons. Marked pieces found in central Europe allude more to the imperial cult, while Iberia related more to Roman mythology.
In Rome, bakers made sourdough using leftover dough for yeast, however in Hispania the locals used beer foam, making lighter and fluffier bread. Pliny the Elder, a Roman originally from northern Italy, served as a procurator in the Iberian Peninsula and commented: "Hispania's bread is very light and very pleasing to the palate even for a refined man from Rome".
Cereal cultivation was the dominant work during the Andalusian period (8th to 15th century), and bread was a daily staple. In Al-Andalus, white bread was made from wheat flour, and coarser and less expensive "red bread" contained bran. On the Christian side of the border, the baker's trade became a relevant and respected profession within society. After the 12th century, bakers formed unions to regulate the market. In Spain, especially along the Mediterranean, bakers' guilds have existed for more than 750 years. For example, the Guild of Bakers of Barcelona (') has been documented as early as 1395.
The Spanish conquest of America introduced a new cereal: maize. Maize has a presence in the bakery of "Green Spain" (northern Spain). An example of maize bread is boroña, brona or broa, a typical bread from Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, and the Basque Country.
This is a list of many popular breads in Spain.
Bread with toppings:
Bread with fillings:
Sweet breads:
Bread has a ritual function and a religious significance in Spain. In Christianity, bread and wine embody the body and blood of Christ, comprising the Eucharist in Christian churches. Even before Christianity, pagan traditions (including Celtic, Greco-Roman, Phoenician) considered bread a fertility symbol. For example, in Ancient Rome, pieces of bread were offered to Ceres, goddess of crops and fertility. Christianity absorbed many of these traditions that use bread.
Eggs were also associated with fertility in many ancient cultures. Many traditions have survived, embed whole eggs into bread dough in spring. This done for the Catalan monas, the Basque opillas, and the Castilian San Marcos hornazo. In these breads, a boiled egg is tied to the bread with two intertwined dough strips in the shape of a cross, linking a pagan custom to Christian mythology.
As a votive or mortuary offering, bread has embodied death in most Mediterranean cultures. It was common at funerals to distribute loaves. According to anthropologist Joan Amades, "At funerals it was customary to offer rolls that the attendees gave to the priest, along with a candle." When a loved one died, "there should be bread in the house to facilitate the transit."
In Spain, when the dead visit their families on All Souls' Day (November 2), they are offered a votive bread called pan de ánimas ('bread of souls'), although nowadays panets and panellets are more typical. This tradition is called "bread of the dead" in Mexico. In some Catalan towns, bread with a cross in the middle (pa de memòria) is served at supper after a funeral, dedicated with a prayer to the deceased. Breads of the dead can be found throughout Spain and the Mediterranean, such as the pan de finado from the Canary Islands, the "saint's bones" from Madrid, or the anthropomorphic breads from Sicily and southern Italy.
In Spain, many Christian families bless bread before beginning a meal, thanking God for "giving us our daily bread" while a cross is marked on the crust, leaving the first slice untouched, or giving it to guests. The relevance of bread at the Christian table is reflected in the marks that are stamped on the loaves: ("Long live the blessed bread"), ("I am the main one at the table"), ("Look at me attentively, I am your food"), etc. Wasting or throwing away a piece of bread was considered a rejection of food of the Lord.
Bread has been the most consumed food in Spain throughout its history. Its prominence was overshadowed by the abundance of food that came in the 1960s and 1970s, when agriculture mechanized and the country opened to the world. The reduction in bread consumption led to a loss of quality, tradition, and culture. According to culinary researcher : "Bread has lost prestige or, better said, it has been demystified, in the sense that it was sacred because it was what was eaten the most ( ...) Never has less bread been eaten than now." It goes hand in hand with a drastic reduction of the Mediterranean culinary tradition, like neighboring Italy.
Starting in the 2010s, renewed interest in traditional Spanish baking emerged. This movement has given rise to names such as Beatriz EcheverrÃÂa from El Horno de Babette in Madrid, who has a YouTube channel about baking with the most subscriptions (in Spanish) and is author of the book The Elements of Bread. The Turris bakery chain in Barcelona, run by Xavier Barriga, author of several bakery books, has also rose in the revival of traditional Spanish baking. Since 2017, PanÃÂ tics has organized the "Route through Spain of good bread" (Ruta del Buen Pan), an annual selection of one hundred artisan bakeries from all over Spain. Spanish law approved a standard for bread quality on April 26, 2019 (Royal Decree 308/2919).
The candeal, bregado, or sobado bread, originating in Castile and León, spread to the peninsula's south and Portugal, where it is known as pão sovado or pão de calo.
Sobado bread was given to the soldiers because it can last weeks. It arrived in Normandy through the Kingdom of Navarre in the times of Charles II 'the Bad', who was married to Joan of France. It gave rise to Norman pain brié (also, pain de chapître, 'town hall bread'), which is very similar to candeal. Later, the Spanish Tercios brought sobado to France, Italy, Flanders, and other parts of Europe. Italian bakers adopted sobado and created new delicacies, such as coppia ferrarese. In the Maghreb, there is a bread derived from candeal called pain espagnole. Italian pan di Spagna ("Spanish bread") refers to the sponge cake, which according to tradition was made by a baker in Spain. The name has passed into Greek as pantespani (àñýÃÂõÃÂÃÂìýù) and into Turkish as pandispanya.
Wheat was one of the first foods exported to the New World, and bread was one of the first foods introduced by Spanish colonization into the diet of the natives. Massive cultivation of wheat in America was politically motivated, since the Spanish controlled the production, distribution, and sale of the product. Rejection of its cultivation manifested to resist Spanish rule. In Mesoamerica, Antonio de Mendoza denounced indigenous people who ignored wheat cultivation, because their techniques for planting corn (with a ') were unsuitable for wheat. Even so, the culture of bread adapted to America, hand in hand with Evangelization.
Today, the Hispanic bakery is spread throughout the Americas, and bread is a common food, with variants across the region.
Kiln or oven (horno) baking bread came to the Philippines from Spain in the 16th century. In 1625, a royal bakery was established in Intramuros. It provided bread for Spanish settlers, pan nava, a very hard, long-lasting bread eaten by crews of Manila galleons, and sacramental bread for Spanish missionaries. The Spanish had a monopoly on bread production as wheat flour was imported from China and Japan. Baking spread to the local aristocracy's private households, and eventually to bakeries for common people.
Though nativized over the centuries, a few staple breads of the Philippines have Spanish origins, including pan de sal (from Spanish-Filipino baguette-like pan de suelo), ensaymada, and pan de monja. Other local breads have Spanish names but no counterparts in Spain, like pan de coco, pan de regla, pan de caña, and Spanish bread (a.k.a. "señorita bread").