My Mother's Homemade Bread

I was born in Venezuela, but since I was a child at home our food and cultural traditions came from Europe, specifically from Portugal, because of my parents. Their country of birth was Portugal. It is a country located in the south of Europe in the Iberian Peninsula, bordering Spain.

My mother was a housewife, one of the activities she did with great love and care was cooking. Mother had a special gift for seasoning her dishes. Cod in salt, tuna with vinaigrette, grilled sardines were dishes that mother seasoned with great love and with the European touch of olive oil.

She prepared delicious dishes with lots of vegetables and above all she had a knack for preparing homemade bread every day. The traditional Venezuelan arepa was not consumed at home. It was not customary to make arepa at home, just like hallacas, which is a traditional Venezuelan dish eaten in December.

I remember that it was when I was about 10 years old that we started to eat hallacas and arepas at home, thanks to a lady who became a good friend of my mother. As the lady was from Caracas, my mother made the arepas and hallacas in the Caracas style, even though we lived in the east of the country, far away from Caracas.

Mum was a specialist in baking bread. It was a delight to eat the bread fresh out of the oven, or made with the round shape of the dough placed in a simple aluminium frying pan on a low flame on the kitchen cooker. I still remember the aroma of the hot bread made by my mother. I remember that my mother used the simple ingredients: wheat flour, yeast, water and salt. She would separate the ready-made dough into large balls, and place each portion of dough on a large cloth on the table, separating each of the dough balls with the creases of the same cloth, then she would put flour like baby powder on each dough ball, cover them with the cloth and let them rest for two hours before putting them in the frying pan.

Let's talk about bread today, the bread we make now in my house. The important thing about eating bread is that it is eaten in a varied way and that its ingredients include nutrients. Nowadays we don't use yeast as much as my mother did, we prepare sourdough, which is obtained from the spontaneous fermentation of flour and water.

There are nutritional benefits to making bread with sourdough. The glycemic index with sourdough is lower than with yeast bread, and bread made with sourdough has an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effect. The important thing when eating bread is that it is made with healthy ingredients and that it is eaten in small portions per day.

Going back to my childhood, at home my mother had the knack of making the most spectacular bread fillings with the most spectacular natural ingredients made from natural tuna or salt cod, all crumbled up. Now here at home, my son inherited the art of bread making from his grandmother. He's an expert at pasteles (empanadas made with wheat flour) and tequeños.

...And in making my mum's biscuits. If she were here in my house, she would be proud of the legacy she left her grandson. I love you, Mom.

Do you guys at home eat bread every day...what fillings do you put in it?

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