Sitos (cereal base of the meal)
Barley Maza with Honey and Olive Oil
EverydayDocumented☕ 🍯facile20 min
A thick paste of toasted ground barley, kneaded with water, a drizzle of olive oil and a little honey. Neither quite bread nor quite porridge: the silent, nourishing heart of the Greek meal, shaped into a ball or flat cake.
Sitos (cereal base of the meal)
A thick paste of toasted ground barley, kneaded with water, a drizzle of olive oil and a little honey. Neither quite bread nor quite porridge: the silent, nourishing heart of the Greek meal, shaped into a ball or flat cake.
Listen, you who are hungry. When I had slain the lion or cleaned the stables, it was not delicate dishes I dreamed of, but good barley maza, the kind that stays in the belly of a son of Zeus. You take the toasted barley, you mold it, you knead it by hand with a little water, a stream of oil and the honey of bees — and you eat as much as ten cowherds together. That is the food of the strong: rough, simple, and it never betrays the arm that toils.
Ingredients
- •Toasted barley flour (alphita) — as much as you like, in abundance (base)
- •Spring water — enough for the dough (binder)
- •Olive oil — a drizzle (softness)
- •Honey — a spoonful (sweetness)
How it was made : Maza was often eaten raw, simply kneaded, because barley does not rise well for bread. It was the daily sitos for most Greeks; wheat bread was rarer and more prestigious. It was adapted as needed: with water, wine, milk, honey or herbs.
Sources : Andrew Dalby, Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, Routledge, 1996 · Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Deipnosophists (Book III, on maza)