Boleima
Also known as: Portalegre Boleima · Upper Alentejo Boleima · Mixing-Bowl Bottom Cake
Alentejo bread dough enriched with olive oil, lard, sugar and cinnamon.
- Origin
- Upper Alentejo
- Region
- Upper Alentejo
- Season
- Year-round
Boleima is a popular Upper Alentejo cake, square or rectangular, made by enriching leftover wheat-bread dough with sugar, olive oil, lard and cinnamon. It bakes golden brown in a tray with cinnamon scattered across the surface.
In Boleima Rica, pieces or layers of apple make the interior moist and fragrant. The poorer version preserves the eggless simplicity of a thrift-born sweet eaten for breakfast, at tea time or as sustenance during rural work.
- wheat-bread dough
- sugar
- olive oil
- lard
- cinnamon
- apple in the rich version
Rustic, cinnamon-warm and moderately sweet, with dense dough; apple adds acidity and moisture.
Variants include poor and rich boleima, Marvão boleima, Alpalhão apple boleima, Portalegre layered boleima and Castelo de Vide's old-style version.
At bakeries, pastry shops and fairs across Upper Alentejo, especially Portalegre, Marvão, Alpalhão and Castelo de Vide.
Coffee, herbal tea or sheep's cheese.
Unlike elaborate Alentejo convent sweets, boleima is clearly popular in origin. It was also called bolo do fundo do alguidar—cake from the bottom of the mixing bowl—because it used scraps of dough left clinging to the vessel after the loaves were shaped.
Sources: tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt
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