Daujėnų naminė duona

Appearance & taste

The loaves are oval (4 to 4.5 kg) or rectangular (4.5 to 10 kg). Everyday loaves have a smooth surface; loaves for festive occasions are decorated with lettering, ornaments or flower motifs made of rye dough. The surface may be very well baked and show visible cracks. The upper crust is up to 6 mm thick and the lower one up to 4 mm, both brown to dark brown.

The crumb is light brown, elastic, porous and slightly sticky, without cavities or dense patches, with caraway visible in places. It contains at most 43 % moisture. The bread has a strong smell and flavour and tastes sweet and sour. According to the specification, it stays fresh for about two weeks without going hard, and its flavour, which develops on the second day after baking, does not change with longer storage.

Production

The dough consists of sifted rye flour at a temperature of 20 to 22 °C, drinking water, sugar, cooking salt, caraway and the spontaneous sourdough that remains in the kneading trough. It is mixed, slowly soured and kneaded in a trough that is made entirely of oak or has a base and side staves of oak. According to the specification, the acid penetrates the wood and gives the bread its particular flavour; this is why such troughs are used for over a hundred years and handed down. Fermentation and mixing times depend on the experience of the baker.

The loaves are shaped by hand, baked in the oven and cooled for at least 12 hours; all steps take place in the area. The bread is sold as a whole loaf or cut: oval loaves are halved or quartered, rectangular ones divided into pieces of 400 g to 4.5 kg and packed in food film or paper bags.

Origin & history

The area covers the municipality of Daujėnai. “Naminė” means “home-made”, and “Daujėnų” is the name of the area. According to the specification, rye bread has been baked at home here since the 17th century. Every farmer baked for his family and owned the necessary equipment himself: millstones, oak kneading troughs, clay bread ovens and wooden bread peels. Some of these still survive in families and museums today. Industrial bread baking, which spread at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, did not displace this tradition. The bread has been sold since 1995, and baking became a family business in the home.

According to the specification, there are no descriptions in books; the knowledge was passed down in families, and all those involved come from families who baked bread at home in the area. According to an old custom, one does not lend one’s kneading trough to another housewife, because she would otherwise carry the bread’s sourness out of the house and the family’s sourdough would spoil. Decorated loaves adorn festivities in the region, such as anniversaries of the small town, the school or the church and Pentecost, as well as weddings, christenings and anniversaries. The bread represented Lithuania at fairs such as Biofach in Nuremberg in 2002 and, since 2003, the Green Week in Berlin. In a consumer survey in 2010, four out of five respondents associated the place Daujėnai with the bread.