Broa de Vil Moinhos

Description: Bread produced with corn and rye flour of the whole type, lightly sifted in the bakery and from mills and watermills (with stone millstones) in the region.

Region: Center.

Special feature: Corn flour bread (highly granular) and rye bread, with crust floured with rye flour, with many thin cracks and dark and queered crumbs.

History: It is a traditional bread throughout the district of Viseu, but mainly made in a place on the outskirts of this city currently called Vil Moinhos and in the Middle Ages Villa de Molinis. This locality has always been a land of millers, and the flour with which the bakers make the bread or «boroa» is still milled there, which they then take for sale in the market. The origins of this bread are lost in the memory of time.

Use: To accompany the main meals and in traditional snacks accompanying cheeses, sausages and wines from the region.

Know-how: The sifted but highly granular corn flour is scalded with very hot water and left to cool, to 'open'. Once cooled, add more water, bait, dissolved salt and a small amount of yeast. Kneading is finished with the addition of rye flour in an amount that should not exceed 25% of the total flour. The dough is left to rise in the "stanca" and is only rotated when it cracks on the surface. Bake in a very strong oven, the temperature of which should drop quickly.

Source: Produtos Tradicionais Portugueses, Lisboa, DGDR, 2001