It probably won’t come as a shock to hear that we in Egypt are the largest consumers of bread in the world, and our country is the world’s largest importer of wheat. In fact, we eat so much bread that 28 billion loaves were sold last Ramadan, and this year has already seen a record volume of wheat purchased. Walk down almost any street in Cairo, then, and you will be hard-pressed not to find a baladi bread seller within a few hundred feet, as it is made by everyone, all throughout the day.
Unlike everywhere else in the Arab world where khubz is the expression for ‘bread’, Egyptians have aish – or ‘life’ – which reflects the importance of bread in our culture and society. Aish baladi, eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, is a central lifeline for the entire population, eaten by rich and poor alike.
The importance of aish baladi is such that it has even made its way into our language. As well as being considered an expression of prosperity, “akl aish”, or “eating bread”, is the outcome of progress in work. “Eat bread!” you may hear if your boss wants you to focus on your work. Or, if you find yourself partial to a new workplace, you may cry, “I want to eat bread!” meaning, “I want to work at your place!”
The inexperienced foreigner could (almost) be forgiven for assuming that, as throughout the rest of the Middle East, pita is the staple of choice in Egypt – after all, bread here is round and flat, too. Yet aish baladi is a special kind of bread, unique to the country, and, dare we say, far superior to your regular flatbread.
Aish baladi comes soft and fluffy, dry, or somewhere in the middle, with a speckling of cracked wheat on top. Its texture lends itself perfectly to making sandwiches, as well as mopping up dinner and scooping up baba ganoush. Nutritionally speaking, it’s also extremely healthy: aish baladi is traditionally made using whole wheat, which is famous for its high fiber, vitamin, and mineral content. And of course, it tastes way better.
When something is so important to so many people it is bound to get mixed up in politics, and bread has been continually subsidised by the government since the aftermath of World War Two. Bread was even at the forefront of the 2011 revolution, with the slogan, “bread, freedom, and social justice” being heard across the city. Bread being the first demand emphasised the critical role it plays in sustaining the poorer sections of society, and symbolised a range of livelihood concerns.
Yet the centrality of aish baladi to Egyptians isn’t just a modern phenomenon; it stems as far as Ancient Egypt. We have evidence of bread-making from historical documents, artistic scenes in tombs showing breads looking suspiciously like aish baladi, and even preserved loaves that have managed to survive due to Egypt’s arid climate. From these now rather stale specimens, the experts have concluded that not all breads of the same shape were made from the same ingredient, so they may have had different names. We do know, however, that a popular grain of the time was emmer – a form of ancient wheat.
The Ancient Egyptians depended on wheat and barley as their essential source of carbohydrates. Emmer, with its favourable nutritional makeup, was popular with people of all backgrounds, and was considered a sacred plant for the Gods. Wheat also played an important role in the economy of the day as a form of payment, and was stored in vaults to be used by the state as a strategic commodity. A depiction of the court bakery of Ramesses III even shows bread being moulded into animal shapes, bearing testimony to its popularity.
Even in Ancient Egypt, it appears that bread had made its way into language and was used as a synonym for food and hospitality. Any, a New Kingdom scribe, told readers, “do not eat bread while another stands by without extending your hand to him” – something that rings true today, given the generosity and hospitality of the Egyptian people. Indeed, given its importance over many thousands of years, what Egypt would do without bread seems almost unthinkable. As the Ancient Egyptians would say, “life without aish is not life”.
