Aglonas maizes veistūklis

Appearance & taste

The loaf is long, with rounded ends, and about four times as long as it is wide; three grooves run along each side of the top. The crust is dark brown, smooth, glossy and medium-hard. The dark brown crumb is soft, coarse, elastic and slightly porous, with larger or smaller pores, and may be slightly moist. On one side it contains soft pieces of dried pork fat and onions, pure white to slightly yellow. If you press the loaf gently, it leaves a slight dent, then springs back.

In taste, the bread combines rye bread, dried pork fat, caraway and onions. It smells of baked rye bread and hardwood smoke, of smoked bacon, fresh caraway and onions.

Production

The bread is made by hand: the rye flour is scalded and fermented, then the dough is kneaded and shaped. Dried pork fat and onions are cut into pieces, laid on one side of the dough base and rolled into the dough; the loaf is then shaped and smoothed.

It is baked for 50 to 56 minutes on maple leaves in a bread oven fired with alder and aspen wood, or in an electric oven for about 10 minutes at 300 °C, 15 minutes at 250 °C and 10 minutes at 180 °C. The loaves are then sprayed with cold water, covered with a damp cloth, cooled and packed individually. All steps from the dough to baking take place in Aglona.

Origin & history

The area is the civil parish of Aglona on the southern shore of Lake Rušons, today part of the municipality of Preiļi in Latgale.

According to the specification, in Latgale, and especially in Aglona, bread for the family was baked on every farm, with its own mill, kneading troughs, bread peels and home-built brick ovens. The “veistūklis” used to be baked only for the household’s own use, often as a small loaf from the dough left over after a batch of bread; it was eaten both in everyday life and at celebrations. It has carried the place name “Aglonas” since 2000, when a bakery in Aglona began baking it using the old method.

Since 2005 the Bread Museum in Aglona, which according to the specification has more than 13,000 visitors a year, has shown the bread and how it is made; it also offers baking classes for schoolchildren. Small loaves bearing the symbol of Aglona, decorated with ears of rye or flower motifs depending on the season, are baked for family celebrations, harvest, sowing and seasonal festivals. The bread is mentioned, among other places, in the glossaries of the scholar Janīna Kursīte (2007 and 2012), which explain the word “veistūklis”, and in Indra Čekstere’s book “Mūsu maize” (2004).