SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH WORLD SPECIALTIES: Serbian flatbread among the ten best breads in Europe!

The flatbread found itself shoulder to shoulder with the famous French baguette and the legendary Italian focaccia and entered the top ten best breads on the map of European bakery specialties.

What makes this traditional product, which is made only from flour, water, salt, and yeast, so special? The guest of the RTS Morning Program, nutritionist Milka Raičević, believes that it is the quality of the wheat grain and the love that goes into making it.

“All the ingredients for the flatbread combine perfectly and give a perfect structure, which is what makes it so special. That’s why we can’t be indifferent when we pass by a bakery and smell their scent,” she points out.

“But this story about our flatbread, which deserves that place, is a story about tradition. However, we have to be careful in which bakery we buy it because skillful, or rather evil, bakers can add a lot of things to the flatbread so that it is not healthy,” says Milka Raičević.

Flatbread is a healthy product, especially if it is whole grain, adds the nutritionist, because in it we get everything that the grain contains, everything we need and what should give us strength for the start of the day.

A story about tradition and specialty

Flatbread, of course, also has additions, so it represents a complete meal.

“You have that famous ‘moča’ that we nutritionists don’t think is good, but even in that combination, you have a complete meal. You have protein, starch, and carbohydrates. But the biggest mistake is if it becomes your daily meal. Because just as we should eat all seven types of food, we also have to change the types of bread,” the nutritionist warns.

Leskovac flatbread goes best with barbecue

Marko Savić, the owner of a Leskovac bakery, says that there is no special secret why their flatbreads are good.

“A high oven temperature, that’s one of the main reasons for a good ‘somun’. Good flour, cold water, and that’s it. My father started the bakery in 1996 and then he took a recipe from a partner and we have been working according to that recipe to this day,” adds Marko.

This bakery produces about six thousand flatbreads a day, but during the barbecue festival, they produce about 20,000 a day.

Bread is present in our daily diet, and flatbread is a pleasure that you should treat yourself to.

White or whole-grain flour

White flatbread has a higher glycemic index and raises blood sugar levels, and the caloric value is much higher. In addition, there are people who have a gluten intolerance.

“Whole grain has a lower glycemic index and it should be on the table much more often than white,” Raičević notes.

“But you know what, there is one very important thing there, and that is that neither white nor whole-grain bread is bad, neither white nor whole-grain flatbread is bad, only our bad habits are the problem. You have to eat two slices of bread during the day. And whether we like it or not, the measure for our amount of bread is the size of the palm. And otherwise, it’s not good,” the nutritionist points out.

If you are one of those who love white bread very much, toast it, it will be less harmful, she advises.

Throughout history, bread also kept the Serbian army going

In the Ponišavlje museum in Pirot, one exhibit, a rarity in Serbia and in Europe, has been carefully preserved for decades. It is ‘tain’, a soldier’s bread, kneaded back in 1912, which for several years, together with its owner, went through the war Golgotha.

The name of the bread ‘tain’ is of Turkish origin and means a ration.

Every Serbian soldier during the liberation wars from 1912 to 1918 was entitled to an 800-gram loaf of bread per day. The fact that a bread pouch was a mandatory part of the uniform testifies to how sacred this bread was to the Serbian soldier.

Whoever has ‘tain’ has not starved, because this soldier’s bread is made from a mixture of rye and white flour in a ratio of 70 to 30 percent. It does not contain additives and preservatives, but a natural sourdough that gives it freshness and is the most important ingredient of this bread. During baking, the goal is to get the strongest possible crust, so ‘tain’ can stay fresh for up to 10 days.

With its extremely high nutritional value, ‘tain’ could provide the Serbian soldier with enough energy to endure all the hardships to which he was exposed. Whether because of its nutritional value or the belief in the magical power of bread, the mother of Aleksa Zdravković from Pirot made her son promise before going to the first Balkan war that he would not eat the first ration of bread but would keep it.

He kept it, saved it, and after six years, he returned to Pirot alive and well.

“Bread has kept us going through tradition and bread has kept us going because we kept our grain. And that is what we nutritionists constantly push, which is to make sure you eat what is from our climate. For that, we have enzymes,” concludes Milka Raičević for RTS.