Alfacar Bread

Bread is a universal foodstuff but Alfacar’s long baking tradition has made our bread a unique product. It is a traditional local product. The recipe for ‘Pan de Alfacar’ has been passed down through generations of bakers who have made this product famous throughout the province and beyond.

Alfacar possesses all the quality resources needed for making bread: water from the springs, wood from the Alfaguara forests for baking in Moorish ovens, thyme and rosemary for flavouring and the old flour mills that supply the bakers with their flour.

Protected Geographical Indication
‘Pan de Alfacar’

On 14 July 2011, the Official Gazette of the Andalusian Regional Government (BOJA) published the favourable decision of the Regional Ministry for the registration of the Protected Geographical Indication ‘Pan de Alfacar’ in the Community Register. The main purpose of this registration was to protect the ‘bollos’, ‘roscos’, ‘roscas’ and ‘hogazas’ which continue to be made in the traditional way. The registration defines the characteristics of Pan de Alfacar, the ingredients, the production process, the formats in which it is presented, the areas in which it is produced (Víznar and Alfacar), etc. You can consult the text of the BOJA PGI Pan de Alfacar as it appears in the publication.

Bakeries that are accredited with the Pan de Alfacar PGI:

Name

Panadería Enrique Fernández

Pan de Mariano

Panadería Geni

Panadería-Pastelería San Juan

Panadería Eduardo Vílchez

Panadería y bollería Horno de Gabriel

Address

Calle Molinillo, 1, Alfacar

Cooperativa de Panaderos de Alfacar, Crta. de Granada

Calle Iglesia, 1, Alfacar

Calle Puente Pareja, 6, Alfacar

Calle Julián Besteiro, 1, Alfacar

Calle Agua, 15, Alfacar

History of the Bread

Bread making is a historical activity in the towns of Alfacar and Víznar.

16th Century

Historical documents from the 16th century (Libros de Apeo y Repartimiento de Alfacar) mention the importance of the baking tradition in Alfacar and mention the number of mills and ovens. The bread industry in Alfacar was first boosted after the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada at the end of the 15th century.

16th Century

17th Century

In the early 17th century, Henríquez de Jorquera documented the fame of Pan de Alfacar in his Anales:

They hold great festivals because there is a lot of money in this place thanks to the large quantity of bread that is baked in its five ovens and ground in its six mills that grind day and night… more than a hundred loads of bread are brought into Granada every day of the year, and it is the best that is eaten there according to its reputation.
And as for Víznar, he relates: It abounds in wine with excellent cultivation of silk; it lacks nothing else for its sustenance. It kneads the bread and brings it to Granada, where it is well baked and clean. It has more than a hundred inhabitants in a parish annexed to the nearby parish of Alfacar.

18th Century

According to the Catastro de la Ensenada, Alfacar could supply 5,000 inhabitants and had less than a thousand.
At the end of the 18th century, Tomás López tells us that Alfacar had 280 inhabitants and its land produced around 6,000 bushels of wheat per year. This was the main activity of its population, which helped to supply bread to the city of Granada.

19th Century

In the mid-19th century, Pascual Madoz indicated that the city of Granada had 14,225 residences, which amounted to a total of 61,610 inhabitants. At that time, Alfacar had a population of 231 residences, or 1,049 inhabitants, and its industry was mainly confined to bread-making, and so all the inhabitants were either bakers, millers or oven-workers, etc. There were 17 flour mills, 5 oil mills and 12 ovens that were always burning. They used 300 bushels of wheat daily to supply bread to Granada, using the money they received to buy the wheat they needed every day from the city’s alhóndiga (corn exchange).

20th Century

In 1950, Alfacar dominated bread production in the Granada area. It had 9 ovens and 41 bakers and marketed 7,000 kg of Alfacar Bread per day in the capital, all of the highest quality and highly prized, as Bosque Maurel points out.

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Protected Geographical Indication
‘Pan de Alfacar’