Bread (matalahúva, potato, maize and egg bread

Bread (matalahúva, potato, corn and egg varieties)

Although there was a time when bread was a luxury for many islanders, who only ate it on rare occasions –and maybe precisely for this reason-, Gran Canaria is a real bread-loving island. So much so it has a place in the culinary memory which identified bread with matalahúga as something home made, from the island. It is our “daily bread” from the countryside, an inseparable part of every meal, be it round or oval in shape.

The island’s most traditional breads mainly contain aniseed as an ingredient and as a condiment which gives it an identity, together with the skills of each baker, with women commonly being artists of this age-old trade. But it wasn’t the only one. While on the subject of this “bread-loving” island, we should also mention “potato-loving”, a mainstay ingredient in Canary cuisine, and “corn-loving” too, as it has been the most widely used crop here, going into gofio, for cooking, and for feeding cattle. ovens to use up left-over boiled potatoes, in paste form mixed in with flour, yeast, sugar, lemon, cinnamon and oil. These breads today are on display on bakers’ stalls at popular Sunday markets, and are mostly made following artisan methods. The most veteran and busiest of these markets can be found all around the basilica of Our Lady of El Pino, in Teror. Here visitors can find a specific bread for this open air market made from eggs. Its dough includes butter, sugar, aniseed, and of course, egg.

Yuri Millares, December 2017

With these staple foods of corn and potatoes, that farmers could most easily get their hands on, they have also put them into bread, and continue to do so, and like it was years ago, only on special occasions. Currently, weekend bread, especially potato bread, is popular, traditionally baked in domestic

Cheeses from Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria is highly acclaimed for its fine cheese-making tradition, reflected in the wide variety of cheeses made here. This diversity is linked to the differences in climatic conditions and types of countryside on the island, to the excellent breeds of cattle that guarantee the quality of the milk, and the dedicated efforts of shepherds and cheese-makers, who boast an identity steeped in tradition. For instance, for centuries the practices of shepherding and flock migration have been maintained at several locations on the island, a peculiarity that gives the local cheeses some truly unique aromas and flavours on the palate.

Around 3,000 tons of cheese are made on our island every year, of which approximately half correspond to the production of nearly a hundred small scale cheese factories that process raw (non heat treated) milk extracted from their own flocks. Unsurprisingly Canarians are the Spaniards with the highest levels of cheese consumption in Spain: 15.3 kilos of cheese a year, compared to the national average of 10.4 kilos.