Rising Prospects

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This is the third post in a series about my recent return visit to Transylvania....a place I have grown to love like my own.

Bread. Bread has been central to the diet of these small Hungarian speaking villages for centuries. During the communist era, when flour was a scarce commodity, you didn't make it at home. Instead you waited for the weekly ration of black bread to be delivered to the village. Black bread can be found no more. Most bread is now made at bakeries but you can still find the wood fired ovens that for years made the local bread. During this visit to the village I once again made bread with some of the village women. Coarse dark bread it wasn't; moist potato bread it was. Sometimes you are fortunate to touch and taste history.

Nanyo. They simply call her Nanyo. She is the oldest woman in the village. I shall always remember her fondly. A picture of her is etched in my mind. In this picture she half sits/half leans on the old stone wall of her corner property. It is after a hard day of work. The sun will set soon but she sits there, facing out to the road, watching village life go by. I imagine she has done this for all her 87 years of living in this place. Who better to lead the bread baking....sharing a bit of village life...sharing a bit of village history.

Tradition. Well, baking bread again for the this, my fourth visit to the village, can hardly be called tradition but it feels like one. Nanyo finds it hard to walk but make bread for us is her task this day. Almost as hard as kneading the great mass of wet dough is the task of firing up the old oven. Today I am her apprentice. She shows me how to feed the oven great bundles of sticks she has collected over the weeks leading up to this event. I am sure they are branches from the plum trees out back. Nothing is thrown away here. Everything has its place and its use.

Phoenix. It is almost like the story of the phoenix...this bread baking. The ashes and embers of all that kindling is swept to the sides of the oven and the great globs of wet dough are carefully placed on the floor of the oven with a long wooden paddle. The oven door is closed. And then you wait. You wait for two hours. When the door is thrown open large blackened hunks of bread are extracted from the oven. You worry that the bread is ruined. But gingerly Nanyo takes each loaf and scrapes away the charred crust. and below that charred crust great golden loaves of Potato Bread. The phoenix has once again risen...

Change. All things must change. With change sometimes there comes loss. Nanyo's four daughters helped her make bread that day. I am sure they know the routine by heart. But each of them is well into their 60's. And you wonder if these traditions...these skills will be carried on to future generations.

During my last visit to Transylvania in 2005, I took on interviewing several people from the village of Homorod Szentpeter. One of those interviewed was Nanyo. Her interview and others are available upon request. Just drop me an e-mail. I also have noted in my introductory post that the breadmaking last time was caught on video and ended up on Utube. You can find it under Romanian Breadmaking.

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