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Lisbon A visit to a pastelaria in Lisbon in the lead-up to Easter brings with it new surprises. Alongside the usual pastries and cakes, you’ll spot folares, loaves of sweet bread, some topped with hardboiled eggs, and many surrounded by a colorful assortment of almonds. This type of bread, which contains ingredients traditionally forbidden during Lent, has long been associated with Easter and the feasting that occurs on this holiday. “After the winter months and the long fast during Lent, Easter brings intense activity in terms of culinary preparations and the exchange of cakes, namely the folares,” writes Mouette Barboff in her book A Tradição do Pão em Portugal (Bread in Portugal). Folares were traditionally a gift given by godfathers to their godchildren, and people would bake them at home in the days before Easter. Today, they’re mainly bought from shops as less people bake at home, even in the villages. What makes this bread unique (and why we’re constantly trying it wherever we go) is that it varies by region. In some places, it takes on more of a cake-like form, like in central and southern Portugal, where folares are sweet and spicy with cinnamon and aniseed and made in different shapes. Further north, we find savory versions, baked with meat and sausages. Some of the best might be from Olhão, in the eastern Algarve. Also known as folar de folhas (“folar with layers”) or folar de Olhão, it’s usually built up with thin discs of dough, in between which are layers of butter and sugar. Due to its growing popularity, this specialty can now be found year round. But around Easter, when it’s traditionally eaten, bakeries producing folares begin working non-stop to fill all the orders. Our favorites include those made by Kubidoce and João Mendes & Rita. Kubidoce’s folares brought innovations to the baking tradition in the coastal Algarve town: “We chose to do something different from the others, with sourdough [one or two days of slow fermentation] and in the shape of a giant cinnamon roll instead of the discs,” explains Filipe Martins, the creative baker behind the project. Kubidoce’s folares are made with carefully selected ingredients, including special butter sourced from France. Alongside the traditional folares made with cinnamon and honey, Filipe developed a new flavor made with nuts and orange zest, which is even more addictive. Filipe has been baking for over a decade and opened the current Kubidoce in Olhão six years ago together with his wife, Mafalda, garnering attention for his pastries and bread and even winning an award in Italy for his pannetone. He’s determined to avoid industrial fats and yeasts, relying on slow fermentation and the simplicity of brown sugar and butter. Springtime brings a significant change of pace as they’re kept busy baking thousands of folares. “In the days before Easter, we sell 70 to 80 percent more compared with the rest of the year,” Filipe tells us as he rolls out a sheet of dough. During these busiest days even their son, Henrique, lends a hand. “At 15 days old, he was already in the bakery,” Filipe jokes. Not far away, the team at another family-run bakery, João Mendes & Rita, is just as busy, baking some 1,600 folares every day for Easter orders. João Mendes & Rita has been making the award-winning sweet bread for 45 years using João’s grandmother Adelina’s recipe. Around 75 years ago, she used to bake the folares herself in a wood-fired oven, but only around Easter. Adelina then passed on the secret recipe to her daughter Eugénia, João’s mother. When João and his partner, Anabela Rita, took the helm of the bakery in 1991, they modernized the space and improved the folar recipe (the original version had less sugar, according to Anabela). Their version of folar de Olhão became a hit outside the Algarve, so they decided to bake it year-round. The first time we met Anabela, she was swiftly pouring portions of butter and sugar in between layers of dough as the intoxicating smell of cinnamon wafted from the hot ovens. She explained that she has been making this family recipe for 30 years, as was evidenced by the fact that the other staff had trouble keeping up with her fast pace. We were mesmerized watching the bakers – all women – in action, performing a well-rehearsed choreography of putting a small ball of dough through a machine (also used for pizzas) that spits them out as discs. Then they carefully assemble a tower of discs inside a greased tin, adding a pat of butter and a dash of sugar with cinnamon in between each layer, before putting them in the oven. During the baking process, the butter and sugar melt, with some of the sweet liquid absorbed by the bread and some bubbling up to create a crunchy caramelized coating on the outside. The dough is made of flour, sugar, eggs, margarine, cinnamon, lemon, water, and yeast. Once baked, it’s unlike any folares in other regions of the country: this one is not afraid of sugar. In addition to the traditional folares, João Mendes & Rita also makes variations with apple, chocolate, or pumpkin that sound equally enticing. In a country with such a sweet tooth, it’s a surprise that these folares are not as widespread as other cakes. They’re best enjoyed fresh, right here in the villages of the Algarve. But, as one of the bakers said as she skillfully filled another tin with layers, “Perhaps it’s for the best. If they were everywhere, they wouldn’t be so special, right?” After having tasted the warm folares straight out of the oven, we couldn’t agree more.

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