Bread

It's the staff of life. Not surprisingly, it's everywhere in Portugal. 

It's possible to buy a loaf here in pastelarias (pastry shops), padarias (bakeries), and, of course, grocery stores.

For the purpose of this post, we're defining "bread" as either a roll or a loaf that is typically eaten plain or with a spread like butter and/or used to make a sandwich. In other words, not banana/zucchini/quick breads.

There are two main kinds of this sort of bread here. It's possible to find a section of the kind of standard, mass-produced loaves you'll find in a US grocery store from brands with familiar-looking label designs if not language:

Pingo Doce, pic taken by Scott

It's also possible to find bread that has been baked fresh that day right at the store. Of the three major local grocery chains within easy walking distance of our apartment, two - Continente Bom Dia and Aldi - along with the corner store Minipreço sell their fresh-baked bread in cases like this:

Aldi, pic taken by Scott

Pingo Doce does not have the same shelf space devoted to fresh loaves; however, they offer a wide assortment of pre-bagged options that we suspect are made in a central location and shipped daily to the stores.

Pingo Doce, pic taken by Scott

There are a surprising (to us) number of types of fresh-baked bread. We’re doing our best to try them all! It’s exciting … and it can lead to mistakes. A few days ago, Scott saw this at Pingo Doce:

“Great!,” he thought, “raisins! Or possibly currants! Either way, score!” In his haste (and overconfidence), he ignored the label:

Turns out, azeitonas, when revealed a little more fully, look like this:

Who puts olives in a loaf of bread? (Apparently, the Portuguese.) Neither of us are fans of olives. While it wasn’t the repast we’d hoped for, we did eat all five of the rolls that came in the bag. Won’t get them again, but it wasn’t as bad as we were expecting.

Finally, and quite excitingly, the Bom Dia markets have these amazing machines:

Continente Bom Dia, pic and video taken by Scott

(If you haven’t watched the video attached to this post yet, now’s the time. See this baby in action!)

In Portugal, the milk and egg aisle looks like this:

Auchan, pic taken by Amy

Butter is sold in refrigerated cases.

In our apartment, though, we leave the butter on the counter so it spreads easily on our bread.

And we refrigerate our milk as we almost always want it cold when we use it 😄.

That's all for now.

Love from Lisbon!

Scott & Amy