Tradition Mollete, with 20% Galician wheat and 10% Galician stone-ground rye
** Galicia is famous for its bread **. And until you start to investigate a little, you are left wondering if it is simply a topic or if there is some reason that makes it here this universal product so special.
And the truth is that there is. Bread is so linked to history and culture that adapts to a territory and its inhabitants like few other products. It seems incredible that only three ingredients ( water, flour and salt ) can give results so different from each other and, at the same time, so linked to a place. But that is precisely what happens with bread.
So it is a food, yes, but it is also fruit of history: humble breads characteristic of a working culture, fancy breads in the most bourgeois and noble cities; breads adapted to the scarcity of cereal and the humidity of the environment , to the products that were found on the ground and to the ovens that were available, breads that were baked twice to withstand the voyages of the sailors or that became rich with butter or lard to celebrate the holidays.
Three ingredients and so many results
So, yes there are reasons that convert Galician bread in something very particular. And if this has been the case throughout history, now that bakeries with other approaches have joined this tradition, with breads from other cultures and that they are capable of reinventing tradition without competing with it, it is the perfect time to embark on a Galician bread route.
1.**SEMOLINA (VIGO) **
Bakery and pastry where they coexist tradition and modernity . In their various points of sale scattered around the city, they coexist Galician bread rolls traditional with classic formulas of international confectionery, empanadas and tea cakes coming out of his workshop daily. And along with them, own creative formulas such as the corn cake, rosemary and honey.
“Our daily bread”, from Sémola (Vigo)
2.**O FORNO DE MOSENDE (OR PORRIÑO)**
O Porrino , just 15 minutes from Vigo, has a century-old baking tradition that has remained very much alive. One of its best exponents is O Forno de Mosende , a bakery with five decades of history, which has been achieved from the small village of As Madorras , become a place of worship for bakers from all over Spain.
3.**AMASAME BAKERY LAB (PONTEVEDRA)**
Amasame Bakery Lab is the culmination of a dream, that of Dani Pampin , from a family of bakers who, after training in Germany and working in the production of quality flour, opened a few months ago the place in which to dump all that experience.
Bakery young, respectful of tradition but there are no limits.
100% rye bread from Amásame Bakery Lab
4.**LA BULANXERÍ (SANTIAGO)**
With that name it is clear where they are going. french root bread in the heart of one of the most bakery cities in Galicia. The project of these neo-bakers broke the mold in a fairly conservative city in terms of gastronomy and has managed, little by little, to make a name for himself among the panarras.
Pay attention also to their butter pastries . I could propose that they put a monument to him in the town square without any problem.
5.** MOA BREAD (SANTIAGO) **
The other pole of the Compostela bakery It is represented by Pan da Moa, surely the best-known Galician bakery today.
The fourth and fifth generation of the Moure family They work hand in hand in this workshop, guardian of tradition, which since San Lazaro neighborhood has turned the traditional Galician bakery upside down. And all with pieces like his Grand Reserve Bread , their artisan sourdough bars or the piece that gives them their name, the Pan da Moa.
The Galician bakery, perhaps, best known today
6.**GERMÁN BAKERY (FISTERRA)**
In the Rúa Real of this town at the ancient end of the world, Juan Luís Estévez defends the tradition of Death Coast , which at some point was in danger of disappearing. Recipes of always recovered by asking the elders of the area, rescuing memories and managing to preserve them for the future.
What this baker does more than 100 km from any city great has immense merit.
Germán Bakery, in Fisterra
7.**BREAD OF THREE (OR THREE, VILARMAIOR)**
When you talk about high-hydration dough breads with Galician bakers, there is a name that, sooner rather than later, ends up appearing in the conversation: Jose Luis Mino And it is true that your bakery can be misleading at first glance, seem like one more. But when you have the chance to chat with José Luis and see how he works you realize that, no, what is done there is not what the others do.
Pan do Tres is a place to go (take advantage of your trips between Ferrol and A Coruña) to try traditional breads, from ancient flavors and ancestral elaborations that have been polished here until they become authentic rustic jewels.
8.**DÍAZ BROTHERS (AS PONTES)**
Not many people know outside the Eume region , but the town of Ace Pontes , in addition to an industrial history, keeps one of the greatest gastronomic treasures of Galicia in terms of oven sweets it means.
The town has several bakeries that offer all year round shortbread and shortbread . But these are sweets that have little to do with the most popular products with which they share the name.
The As Pontes mantecados are made with cooked lard (butter from baked clarified cow's milk ), while the denser powders are prepared with lard for more than a century.
Hermanos Díaz, founded in 1933 , belongs to one of the families that have endeavored to preserve that sweet legacy, but it is also a good place to get good bread from the area and some interesting empanadas.
Breads, shortbread, shortbread and empanadas
9.**O FORNO DO CARLOS (CEA)**
Cea is the great bakery town of Ourense . It is impressive to move along the roads in the area and see, every few meters, the sign of an oven. here they are born the only breads from Galicia with a Protected Geographical Indication , the Cea breads , dense, consistent, with a marked cereal flavor.
And one of the ovens that has preserved this tradition that sinks its roots in history is O Forno do Carlos , next to the national highway. Here, work is done as it has always been done, as established in the specifications of the I.G.P. to produce daily pieces of a unique bread , recognizable with closed eyes.
The epitome of Cea bread
10.**CRESPO (MONDOÑEDO)**
Bakery of the usual, of those in which from the counter of the office you look at a workshop covered in flour , in which firewood is stacked at the entrance and the smell of smoke and freshly baked bread fills the entire Alameda area.
It's worth trying their threads , with the taste of traditional bread, but you cannot leave the office without at least trying (they run out quickly) to get hold of one of their famous empanadas.
fresh out of the oven
These are just some of the many names that we could put on the table, bakeries capable of making the route continues from town to town, without seeming to end.
BECAUSE TEN BAKERIES ARE FEW BAKERIES
We could have continued, and that's the beauty, by the Bouzada bakery (Silleda, Pontevedra), **the Picos bakery ** (O Barqueiro), Salome (Monforte), Martiñán (Abadin), Xurxo (Calo, Teo), Alvaro (Caldas de Reis), ** Xallas ** (Negreira), Vilar de Mouros (A cappella), holy (Or Boat of Valdeorras), Sigueiro Bakery (Sigüeiro, Oroso), Pineiro (Porto do Son), J. Castro Brothers (Neda) …
Names that justify that Galician bread will be the best or not (let's leave the rankings for those who are interested in them) but it is, of course, something special.