Nearly every morning around 7:20 we head out the door for a 25 minute exercise walk. These walks are for exercise, yes, and for sharing. They aren’t the same as Janet’s walks back home with her girl friends, but they are time to talk as we walk.
They are also time to explore our city of Mindelo, at least areas within walking distance of our house. I (Dennis) lead the exploring and we have covered a lot of different neighborhoods. And we find interesting things, like Chicão’s house.
Within the first week we were here we discovered the Padaria Alecrim. We had walked down to our beach, Laginha, walked past Electra’s water desalination plant and electrical generating facility, and immediately picked up the aroma of fresh bread.
It was too good to not go inside and explore more, so we entered the store and saw the shelves of fresh bread. I don’t recall if we had money to buy any bread the first visit, but if not we were back in a day or two and bought some coconut or cinammon rolls and we also saw a whole wheat loaf of sliced bread. We bought some of that too.
Fresh Bread Shelves inside the Padaria
Our favorite sliced wheat bread
That was 19 months ago. It is still our bread staple. We have two loafs in the freezer right now and every week we buy two to four loaves. We use it mostly for our sandwich supper, but also as bread and butter with other meals and french toast for breakfast (that is one of my meals to prepare).
Young Adults making tuna sandwiches from the basic white roll
We do enjoy other breads. The basic white bread rolls are tasty as an occasional bread. On Fogo that is all we can find. Praia has Pão Quente which has a 3 cereal bread which we like as a multi-grain bread, and another store close to Sister Mcknights that has a good whole wheat sliced bread, but nothing is as good as Padaria Alecrim’s whole wheat bread.
Like in many countries, Capeverdians are accustomed to buying fresh bread, almost for every meal. During our morning walks that take us past mini-markets or bakeries, we see is a flow of children and adults heading to the store with their bread bag for their morning bread. None of the breads have preservatives and generally are meant to be purchased and consumed now.
Our wheat bread comes in two sizes, medium and small. The small is too small for me, so we buy medium.
While it is not a long walk to Padaria Alecrim, about 10 minutes, it is out of the way for normal grocery shopping. Fortunately our favorite grocery store, Galina and Silva’s sells various breads from Padaria Alecrim, including our whole wheat bread. We know if we go after 11:30 AM they will (or should) have our bread on their shelves. They normally get 3 loaves a day of this bread. There have been days when we bought all three loaves.
The people at Galina’s know us pretty well as very regular customers. One day several months ago we went in and there was no bread on the shelves. I turned to ask a sales clerk what was up and she handed me a loaf of our bread. I asked her if she had two and she handed me a second. They try to take care of us.
Another time it wasn’t on the shelf we were told that the Padaria was having trouble with their slicer and couldn’t make it. They thought maybe they would have the uncut bread at the Padaria. We made a trip to the Padaria only to learn that there was none of the bread. I seem to recall that it was more than the slicer that was the problem, maybe they were out of the whole wheat flour they used.
Given their bread is something very special, we had discussed our interest in taking a tour of the Padaria to learn more how it is made. With our exit from Cape Verde looming ever closer we decided to give it a try.
On a recent Saturday we got our house work done, dressed in our missionary dress, and headed over to the Padaria. They were a little unsure about us taking a tour at first and insisted we talk to the manager. In the mean time we learned that the woman who told us to wait was one of the owners. This was a little odd.
Two of the owners, the manager on the left and the daughter of the baker on the right
While we waited we began a conversation with this “owner” and learned the following:
- She and her husband are joint owners with another couple. She and her husband live most of the time in Holland. Thus the other couple manages the business.
- They got started about 9 years ago when an opportunity came up to buy the bakery equipment at a discount and the two couple decided to join forces.
- The woman we were talking with had grown up on Santo Antão, the daughter of a bread maker. Her brothers still run the padaria on our sister island. She feels right at home in the business.
- The other couple made a trip to Brazil, early on, to learn bread making. They brought back recipes for various breads, including our wheat bread.
We were both a little glad it was not high summer and pitied those who had to work down there when the heat of the ovens would combine with the heat of the sun outside.
The Giant Mixer and the Bread Chef, a Potent Team - The water cooler is right behind them
The basement was large and provided plenty of space for the making of bread. They had one giant mixer where all the batches were mixed up. It put a lot of work into the dough so it was critical that they use chilled water in the recipe to avoid overheating the yeast and the dough.
A batch of white roll dough being weighed out for final cutting into rolls
We watched as they made a batch of white flour rolls. We didn’t get to see the raising and baking, just most of the prep work. This video shows the primary steps we observed.
Get in on the fun action of the dough boys and girls
Another crew had premeasured all the ingredients besides the flour into the plastic containers shown here. They were ready for a number of batches of various breads. Janet noted that one of the ingredients was wheat fiber to increase the gluten content.
The main padeiro (baker) oversaw everything. He put his hand in the mixer a couple of times to check the dough as it mixed. Janet commented that she does that all the time. A bread baker knows what a good dough feels like.
The last steps we saw were the weighing out of the dough for cutting into roll size balls. The roll dough will go onto trays in large racks and into the raising oven (below on the left). From there the rack will go into the baking oven (below on right) then out to the cooling area before being taken to the store for sale or onto one of their two delivery vans. Some bread, like our wheat bread, must first be bagged.
The rising oven on the left and the baking oven on the right. Open the door and roll the racks in.
Here is a photo of a delivery van from another padaria making the rounds.
We learned of one other product Padaria Alecrim makes – bread flour, a very fine bread crumb. They take old bread, slice it in thick slices, lightly toast it in the oven, then grind it into bread flour, package, and sell it to cooks that use it when a recipe calls for bread crumb/flour.
There you know a little about bread in Cape Verde. Go ahead, enjoy a roll or slice from your local padaria.
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