27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Cake anyone?
Once sacred to Egypt's forbears, bread has become one of the country's most politically volatile commodities. Alaa Shahine traces the history of traditional breadmaking
Inside the red-hot oven, round patties of dough take shape and colour golden; it is a process that has taken place day-in and day-out for thousands of years.
Quality vs. quantity: hot issues that rage on as the nation's bakers continue to toil in front of hot ovens (photos: Sherif Sonbol); (bottom) statue of ancient Egyptian baker at the Egyptian Museum
The first known people to cultivate wheat and barley, the ancient Egyptians are credited with being the first bakers. They used to crush the wheat and barley, sieve the flour, and cut the dough before putting it into ovens made from mud, explained Nadia Qoutb of the Egyptian Agricultural Museum. The first loaf of bread dates back to the Stone Ages, around the year 10,000 bc, as evidenced by wheat crushers dating to this time. As we toured the museum, Qoutb pointed out displays of ancient remnants of bread -- little brown lumps that were once delectable breads and biscuits. Some were shaped like animals, some were stuffed with fruits (figs, most probably) and still others were baked with aniseed and fenugreek. One sample had a hole in the middle. "In this hole, they would put an egg or maybe some vegetables," Qoutb explained. "We can definitely say that this kind of bread was the first 'pizza' ever known."
No one can know what possessed the ancient Egyptians to bake the first loaf of bread, but one legend has it that around 2600 bc, an Egyptian slave was making flour and water cakes. He fell asleep and the fire went out before the cakes were baked. The weather was warm and the next day, people found the harder cakes more pleasant to eat -- hence, bread.
Bread soon evolved into a basic foodstuff. "Bread was sacred in ancient Egypt," Qoutb said. "Ancient Egyptians believed in life after death, and so bread was one of the first and most important things to be buried with the dead." But in 21st century Egypt, how to keep the living supplied with enough bread is a matter of greater concern.
Arafa Wahba, 64, owns two bakery shops in the Cairo district of Hadayeq Al-Qubba. The current head of the bakers' section at the Cairo Trade Chamber, Wahba started working in the early '50s, when a loaf of traditional flat, coarse, wholemeal bread -- baladi bread -- sold for half a piastre. Wahba notes that then, the four kinds of baladi bread -- plain, dried, roasted and half-roasted -- all sold for the same price. White and brown bread were a little more expensive, "But unlike these days, we used to get customers from all social classes who wanted baladi bread because of its known [health] benefits," Wahba said.
However, the 1960s brought winds of change, namely, the nationalisation of mills in 1961 -- a date which signifies a turning point in the bread-baking business. "[Prior to the nationalisation] there was competition among the mills to sell us the best flour at affordable prices," Wahba said, lamenting that after nationalisation, bakers were forced to deal with specific mills based solely on geographical distribution. "Having guaranteed customers meant that producing good flour was the least of state-owned mills' concerns. Consequently, the quality of bread started to drop." Who was held to blame? "The consumer finds nobody but the baker to blame," answered Wahba bitterly.
The problem persists today. Bakers claim that government mills do not even wash the wheat before crushing it, and as quality suffers, consumers look elsewhere. On the street, those who can afford it are buying more expensive bread. "I don't buy baladi bread at all," commented Said Ashour, a taxi driver. "Its quality has dropped sharply. Sometimes, you might find dust and small pebbles inside the loaf."
Addressing the obvious deterioration in the quality of subsidised bread, Hosni El-Deeb, under-secretary at the Ministry of Supply and Interior Trade, countered the vociferous complaints made by bakers with complaints of his own. El-Deeb noted that a baladi loaf should weight 130 grammes, while the dried version should weight 110 grammes. "Yet many bakers violate this rule," El-Deeb insisted. In a public statement, El-Deeb accused a large section of the nation's bakers of reducing the weight of loaves, then selling the subsidised flour on the black market. "And millions go to their pockets!" exclaimed El-Deeb angrily.
El-Deeb promised that in order to limit violations the ministry would come down hard on bakers, referring to the "daily raids" on bakers by the ministry's investigators. Violators are subjected to severe punishment under Egyptian law. As for a more comprehensive plan of bakery reform, the ministry has announced plans to upgrade all government flour mills.
But bakers are not impressed. The ministry's plans come after many months of active complaint on their part, but many issues have yet to be addressed. "Flour is the only subsidised component in the bread," explained Ashour Osman, who has run a bakery in the working-class neighbourhood of El-Waily for more than 30 years. The long list of expenses includes salt, yeast, fuel, water, electricity, equipment and the working force. "Since 1988, all prices increased. The cost of production increased and, consequently, our profit margin decreased, because we are forced to sell at the price set in 1988. Many of us are now making losses," Osman lamented.
The price of the baladi bread increased from half a piastre to two piastres in the early 1970s. In 1977 late president Anwar El-Sadat dared to try and raise the price once again, only to be confronted by the 17-18 January Uprising, which was put down only when the military was brought in and a state of emergency announced. In 1988, however, the price jumped once again to its current level -- five piastres.
To keep the price down on a commodity so politically charged, the government allocates LE2 billion in flour subsidies annually. Yet the recent tug of war between bakers and the Ministry of Supply are ominous signs that something will have to change within the current setup of subsidised bread production. Bakers fear the final demise of their craft is imminent. "In the past, when the business flourished, we had some of the finest bakers you can imagine," Wahba recalls. "Bakers were well-trained and they really liked what they were doing." Today, many bakers live in fear of coming under the painful scrutiny of the ministry.
Wahba is a product of the good old days. "I grew up believing the title of baker was something you work hard to earn -- and it was worth the hard work," he said. Unlike many of the bakers I met, bread-baking did not run in Wahba's family. He does, however, come from a village of Simbo El-Kobra, in Gharbiya governorate, which is known for its bakers. "All good bakers are known to come from there," he noted proudly.
At the age of 17, Wahba began learning his craft, standing long hours in front of a hot oven. It wasn't for money, however, that he sought out the profession. "The main reason was prestige," he remembers. "A baker was more like a leader in my neighbourhood. He was one of the key persons within the community: a person people could turn to, to settle disputes, and his word and decisions were respected by everybody."
Today, and in spite of a vocational-training project run by the Trade Chamber, good bakers are very rare, even though their wages have tripled in the last 10 years. Bakers make an LE20 base wage per day and an additional LE1.25 for every sack of flour processed. Of course, work is not regular, but still, the wages are relatively high. The reason most cited as diminishing the number of bakers is the risk of arrest and harassment they face from the daily raids undertaken by ministry's investigators. "They can face harsh punishments and fines along with the owner of the store if they are caught violating any of the rules regulating the baking process," Wahba explained. "Therefore, even among those trained by the Trade Chamber to be bakers, we find people unwilling to work after finding out about the risks of the job."
According to the Trade Chamber, each bakery is subject to an average of 10 formal memorandums by the ministry's investigators per month. Such memorandums result in huge fines and, in some cases, imprisonment. A ministry policy enacted in 1994 abolished any grace period and all forms of amnesty that used to be granted to violators. Officials at the ministry refused Al-Ahram Weekly's request to comment, however, a press statement released by Supply Minister Hassan Khidr said that the ministry is currently studying 13,000 applications to establish new baladi bread bakeries, giving priority to areas that suffer a bread shortage.
Old-time bakers like Wahba counter the minister's implicit message that their complaints are unfounded by saying that "People applying to establish those shops are not bakers -- they don't know the current troubles."
Current baladi bread bakeries are coming under increased pressure as a result of the introduction of new kinds of white bread into the market at a price ranging from 10 to 25 piastres per loaf. "It tastes better than the baladi loaf and it weighs more too," says Mahmoud Abdel-Magid, who owns a grocery store that sells these newer types of bread. "The problem still remains, however, that I can afford this new bread. Many others cannot."
Another alternative is the bread regularly sold on the street. Nicknamed "pavement bread", a recent study by the Ministry of Health indicated that this type of bread is exposed to so much pollution that it can even be quite dangerous. "Well, if the baladi loaf is under weight and full of defects, and the bread sold in the streets is dangerous, and other types are too expensive -- what can we eat?" asked the driver Ashour.
Bakers interviewed by the Weekly say that the answer to today's bread problems is an increase in the government's subsidies for flour. "This will ease our burden and increase our profit margin," Osman explained. "When we make money, the government in turn would then have the right to impose even harsher punishments on law violators. Everybody goes home happy."
But the government's liberalisation policies aiming to reduce social service and subsidy expenditures have left it strapped for cash and the prospect of an increase in subsidies is doubtful. Naturally, "let them eat cake" is an option -- not, however, an ultimately happy one as far as the government is concerned.
For more information visit the Web site www.bread.com
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