Home baked

Commercially-produced bread is threatening an age-old tradition of home baking. Rania Khallaf reports

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Traditional bread baking scenes are increasingly rare

Throughout my journey to Al-Aqwaz village -- located 60 kilometres south of Giza Governorate -- I dreamt of hot bread. I was bitterly disappointed when I arrived, for, according to specialists concerned with preserving our history of bread-making, women bake traditional breads that have lost ground to the mechanised bread production that takes place outside of the home.

Ever since advent of government-owned bakeries in Egyptian villages, in which subsidised bread is sold, fewer and fewer families bake at home. Convenience is an obvious factor in this lifestyle change; also the market price of wheat has risen, to the extent that buying bakery-produced bread is cheaper.

Further, "the high rate of enrolment of girls in schools is definitely one of the reasons behind the decrease in this home industry," says Mohamed Kerima, director of Al-Aqwaz Cultural Centre. And more families now depend on the government bakeries for fino bread to prepare the children's school sandwiches

In Al-Aqwaz, Darahem Mohamed, grandmother of six, sat at the door of her home's baking room. "We either give them money to get sandwiches from the school's cafeteria or we use baladi bread for sandwiches," she told Al-Ahram Weekly, as the kids ran about the courtyard.

Hers is one of the few homes where bread is still baked on a regular basis. The baking room, once a staple in any farmer's home, is situated on the ground floor and houses the oven of the house. It is packed with women, every one of whom is in charge of fulfiling a different task. It is stiflingly hot but the smell of freshly baked bread is tempting.

The bread baked here is called bettaw, and it is made with corn and fenugreek. The dough does not take a long time to prepare. One woman makes small balls out of the dough and passes them along to the woman beside her who puts them on a matraha, a plate with handles made with reeds.

The matraha is then moved around in circles till the ball of dough spreads out into a round flat loaf. It is passed to another woman who puts the bread inside the mud and red-brick oven. Mervat proudly pulls out a white, crisp loaf and hands me a piece. It is divine.

Normally, baking takes place at dawn. And the bettaw made in one session lasts for the whole month, if stored in a well-ventilated room.

Their neighbour Nawal Bakri would like to bake her own bread too but she lives in an apartment where there is no place for an oven.

Traditionally, young girls learn baking from the age of 14. However, Naiema Abdel-Wahed learnt to bake after she got married, because she was busy studying at school. An art teacher at the village school, she cheerfully switches on the oven, and then calls her daughter to bring her the dough and matraha.

The product being baked in her kitchen is a wide, round and thick wheat bread. After the bread comes out of the oven they cut it into two pieces and dry it once again in the oven so that it lasts for longer time -- approximately 10 days. Before eating it, the bread is sprinkled with water so that it becomes soft again.

Naiema is not a big fan of her own baking, "I can feel the smell of gas when I eat the bread. I would prefer the bread baked by the traditional mud oven," she says. She considers the bread produced by local bakeries as "third class bread", which she definitely does not like but has to purchase to "feed the children".

With the commercialisation of baking, even those who still ache their own bread feel the change wrought by the passage of time. "Some traditions accompanying baking have vanished with time. Women used to chant traditional songs while they were kneading, and when the bread came out of the oven," said Samih Shaalan, a professor of traditional arts at the Academy of Arts. "Now all these songs have almost vanished as new generations are not eager to learn old traditions," he added.

"In the past, women believed that there is a dialogue between the woman who kneads and the dough. It was largely believed that the dough which rises could understand the women's songs," Shaalan explains.

In 1992, Shaalan started his study for a PhD on bread-making in Egyptian villages. The five-year study was conducted in 12 villages in the Menofiya, Daqahliya, Qalyobiya, Sharqiya, Gharbiya, and Kafr El- Sheikh governorates.

"The aim of the study was to examine different traditions and ways of making bread," Shaalan said. Despite the cultural diversity that predominates throughout the chosen field of research -- some villages were inhabited by Bedouins, fishermen, or traditional peasants -- there was not much differences in the baking traditions the people followed, he noted.

Kerima says that more than 15 per cent of rural women in Giza have become dependent on the local bakeries. Until recently, "this was uncommon. It was a shame to see peasants purchasing bread, but with the economic hardships, peasants have become customers rather than producers."

He also points out that bread production has decreased in Egyptian villages because farmers tend to sell all their high grade wheat to try and make money. "In the past, peasants used to assign some quantity of their production for their own consumption and sell the rest of it," he explained. Now, some poor women from Al-Sharqiya Governorate, he added, have resorted to selling their own home-made bread in urban markets -- such as the Giza market -- just to try and make ends meet and feed their families.