Fogaça da Feira Sweet Bread
Also known as: Feira Castle Sweet Bread
A votive sweet bread shaped like the keep of Feira Castle.
- Origin
- Santa Maria da Feira
- Place
- Santa Maria da Feira
- Region
- The North
- Category
- Festive & Seasonal
- Season
- Year-round; especially 20 January
- Evidence
- Well documented
Fogaça da Feira PGI is Santa Maria da Feira's emblematic sweet bread. The European single document defines T45 and/or T55 wheat flour or similar, eggs, sugar, butter, fresh yeast or starter dough, water, cinnamon, salt, lemon juice and zest. The dough is wound into a cone and four cuts at the top form the castle towers.
The protected product has a brown, crisp crust and a loose, light, slightly yellow crumb with small perforations. Its height must be between 65% and 135% of the base diameter. It is sold year-round, although its defining occasion is the Fogaceiras Festival.
- wheat flour
- eggs
- sugar
- butter
- baker's yeast
- cinnamon
- lemon
- salt
Gently sweet, buttery and citrus-fragrant, with quiet cinnamon, a toasted crust and tender crumb.
The protected product may be sold whole, halved or sliced, packaged, loose or frozen, in several sizes within the official proportions. The characteristic form retains its cone and four turrets. A household reproduction outside the municipality may follow the recipe, but is not Fogaça da Feira PGI because every protected production stage must occur in Santa Maria da Feira.
At producers and pastry shops across Santa Maria da Feira year-round, and throughout the town during the Fogaceiras Festival.
Editorial suggestion: coffee, black tea or a small glass of Port.
Municipal tradition links the Fogaceiras Festival to a vow to Saint Sebastian during a plague outbreak in 1505; the municipality itself uses cautious wording about that outbreak. The European single document records references to fogaça in the 1220 royal inquiries and notes that 2005 marked the festival's fifth centenary. Every 20 January, girls dressed in white carry the breads on their heads in civic and religious processions. The European Commission registered Fogaça da Feira as a PGI through Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/930 of 1 June 2016.
Well documented
Identity supported by institutional, specialist or corroborating sources.
- cm-feira.pt/-/festa-das-fogaceir-2 (opens in a new tab)
- cm-feira.pt/en_US/fogaca-da-feira (opens in a new tab)
- visitportugal.com/en/node/508951 (opens in a new tab)
- visitfeira.travel/index.php (opens in a new tab)
- eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/ (opens in a new tab)
- dgadr.gov.pt/pt/destaques/601-ue-reconhece-fogaca-da-feira-como-igp (opens in a new tab)
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