Pa de Pagès Català

Appearance & taste

The bread is round and rustic and weighs between 200 g and 3,000 g. The crust is thick, crisp and brown; because it bursts open on top during baking, it shows a few cracks. The crumb has large, irregular holes, is white to cream-coloured depending on the extraction rate of the flour, and stays soft for a long time.

The bread is very fragrant, with a slightly sour aroma. According to the specification, it still tastes fresh eight to nine hours after baking and keeps a pleasant texture.

Production

The dough consists of flour, sourdough or pre-ferment, water, baker’s yeast and cooking salt. Wheat flours of medium to very high baking strength and varying extraction rates are used; up to 10 % of the flour may be rye flour. The sourdough or pre-ferment usually comes from a previous fermentation.

After kneading the dough rests; according to the specification, the baker’s skill determines the aroma in this phase. The dough is then divided, shaped into balls, which rest again, and shaped by hand – machine shaping is not permitted. After proving, the loaves are scored and baked in an oven that transfers heat through a floor of refractory material. The baker decides how much steam it adds; the appearance of the crust, among other things, depends on this. All steps up to cooling take place in Catalonia.

The bread is sold whole and individually packed, in paper bags or other biodegradable material. It is packed only in the shop shortly before sale, so that the moisture of the crumb does not make the crust soft and chewy. It is sliced only in the shop on request; loaves over 1,000 g may also be sold in pieces by weight. The packaging bears a serial number, the name, the PGI logo and the EU symbol.

Origin & history

The area covers the entire Autonomous Community of Catalonia. “Pagès” means farmer: in the countryside, farmers baked the bread on their farmsteads, the masies, and in the village houses for their own use, and the rural bakers also made it because it kept for several days. According to the specification, this tradition has been passed on for over six centuries. With the rural exodus of the 16th to 18th centuries, bakers brought the bread to the towns. In the 18th century, according to the historian Antoni Riera, there were conflicts in Barcelona between the city bakers and the bakers from the surrounding villages, because customers preferred the latter’s pa de pagès.

At the end of the 19th century, industrialisation brought thousands of country people to Barcelona, Manresa or Reus, many of whom found work in the city bakeries. Although machines, finer flours and long loaves came into use there, the new urban population stayed loyal to the farmhouse bread, so the bakeries offered both. An early depiction of large round loaves appears in the wall paintings of the Pia Almoina in Lleida from the 14th to 15th centuries; the shape of the bread is also suggested in works by Picasso and Dalí. Farmhouse bread was listed in the official bread price lists of the four Catalan provinces until bread prices were deregulated in 1986.