Return to Home Page Harrys Greece Guide

Some sweet pastries Bakeries Page 3

Milopita

This is a small apple pastry, usually made with filo dough, but also with heavier pastry dough.

Bougatsa

This is a sweeter pastry, often eaten with coffee, made with filo dough and a custardy filling. Though most guide books describe it as a 'cream pie', the filling resembles custard more so, though made with less eggs than galaktoboureko (below) and hence less heavy. The flaky pastry is dusted heavily with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

bread stick or kree-seen-yaGalaktoboureko

This pastry is also made with a heavy custardy filling, with up to ten eggs used, and though filo is used for the 'crust', the sugar syrup poured over it makes it a very moist affair.

Kree-seen-ya

Bread sticks like these pictured left, may also come with sesame seeds and in various widths and lengths - fattening but convenient and storable.

Black Bread

Most bakeries also sell 'mavro' (literally, 'black') bread, meaning wholewheat, though in many places good wholewheat flour seems to be unavailable, and they use a white flour to which bran has been added, never quite doing the trick, as the result is a bread with no density and almost no flavor.

Breads made with 'prozimi' (starter), are however, far superior, and there are also the 'olikis' (wholegrain bread, made with various grains), and 'sikaleos', or rye bread. But the main staple, it should be repeated, is the white crusty village bread, which varies greater from place to place, and also from bakery to bakery within one town!

This bread is served in a basket with every meal, at homes and tavernas or estiatoria (restaurants) both, and is commonly use to mop up the oil and/or sauces from the food, from salads dressed with lemon and oil (lemoni and ladhi) to mayeirefta (below), which are casserole dishes, always cooked in a generous quantity of olive oil along with whatever other ingredients are used.

Greek Bakeries Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4