Different types of bread in the 19th c.

The author finds that Cypriot flour is dark in colour; even the best wheat bread is never white in colour. She notices that homemade bread is sold to foreigners in the village kafeneio (coffee shops). They bake bread using wheat, barley or a mixture of the two.

Often, along with bread, they bake rusks using various methods. The most common type of rusk, which is about the size of a small fist, is called "poxamátin". It can be stored for months, just like the rusks served on ships, and it is usually soaked (in tea or milk) before consumption. They also like baking a kind of soft rusk that is sprinkled with sesame seeds and is round in shape, called koulloúri. Glystarká is a harder type of rusk, made with the finest flour and sesame seeds. It is completely flat and thin and has about the size of a hand. At a certain mountain location, the well-known "poxamatia tou ergati" (worker's rusks) is baked from a mixture of grains, broad beans and chickpea flour; it is a rustic delicacy that when consumed while it is fresh, it has a very nice and strong taste. It is customary for villagers when baking bread to bake many small koulloúri, which are consumed fresh. Trimithopitta is particularly popular; the 'trimithi' seeds, which smell and taste like a peanut plant of a particular variety that grows in Cyprus, are mixed into the dough. Pannyhida is a bread type offered in church along with kollyva; it is a delicious wheat bread made with little or no yeast. A seal with a cross is placed in the top centre of this sweet bread (Ohnefalsch-Richter, 1900, pp.66, 96, 100-101).