Polish family bakes bread from grain grown on their own 4 hectares
The Piwowar family in the Lesser Poland region bakes traditional Męcina bread from grain grown on 4 hectares. They deliver it to customers personally and do not plan to expand.
The 23rd Warsaw Bread Festival was held in Warsaw, organised by Poland's National Institute of Culture and Heritage of the Countryside. Stalls along Krakowskie Przedmieście offered traditional baked goods, regional delicacies and handicrafts, and the programme included a demonstration of grain milling on millstones and bread-baking workshops. Among the breads presented was Męcina bread (chleb męciński).
A bread with traditional product status
Męcina bread was added to the Traditional Products List kept by Poland's agriculture ministry on 1 December 2010, in the bakery and confectionery category for the Lesser Poland voivodeship. It is a round loaf with a dark golden, crisp crust and an elastic, porous crumb. It is also known for the aroma of wholemeal flour and of the fir and beech wood used to fire the oven.
The bread is made with a sourdough starter that also uses sour milk and wholemeal wheat flour ground on millstones, and it is baked in a wood-fired oven. The recipe has been preserved for generations by the Piwowar family from the village of Męciny in the Limanowa municipality, in the Beskid Wyspowy mountains.
A family business on four hectares
Halina and Marek Piwowar farm 4 hectares of land, where they grow grain for the bread. According to Halina Piwowar, the family set up the bakery partly because of high unemployment in the region, and bought the necessary equipment with a grant from the Labour Office. They have no shop and deliver bread to customers themselves, a practice that began when a railway construction project cut off access to their farm.
The Piwowars do not plan to expand, saying their current capacity is enough and they have no shortage of customers. Their bread has also been recognised by juries at various competitions.
Consumption trends
In 2023 the average Pole ate almost 36 kg of bread products a year, compared with nearly 48 kg in 2014. Eating habits have changed, including growing popularity of low-carb and gluten-free diets. Anna Gogół, another festival exhibitor who runs bread-baking workshops, says consumers mainly choose rye bread, while many are interested in flours from ancient grain varieties such as einkorn-type emmer and wholemeal spelt.
