Sourdough Grian Bread

You won’t believe it, but I had this bread in mind since 2014, it seems incredible that it took me almost 7 years to make it. But hey, it’s never too late if it’s good, right? The thing is that I’ve been making bread all week and, for some reason, I remembered this bread, which is creation of Josep Pascual. The fact is that I said, enough procrastinating, and I decided to make it (I should do it with many other things… But that’s a start). So here is my Sourdough Grian Bread.

Originally, its author calls it “Pan Sol” – “Sun Bread”. In my case I wanted to adapt the name to what I felt when I saw it, as it has happened with many other breads that I have created and I have left on the blog; Hveiti Bread, Flechtkottbröt, Shibari Bread… Many times, when I make a bread or a preparation, I feel that I have to give it a name that tells something about it.

I consider that all living beings and all things have something to tell or transmit. I think it is something important, almost at the same level of what we are creating and showing. So I started to look for information in order to give it a suitable name.

The origin of its name: Sourdough Grian Bread.

It is true that this bread is very similar to the shape of the sun. It could also be a star, a flower or even an octopus. Why not. But I quite liked the original idea.

The external appearance transports me to the Celtic civilisation. The colour, the shape, the curves that draw the lines, the textures, the drawings…. It transports me directly to that culture and stage of history which, in its first phases, belongs to the Bronze Age, but which in its second half already belongs to the Iron Age.

An elite that arose from trade exchanges between the north and the Mediterranean world, which received cultural influences that gave rise to a society of princes around the 8th century BC who were buried in large monumental tombs in which objects of exceptional artistic quality were found.

In the 4th century BC, migrations were provoked that exported their culture all over Europe and formed the classical Celtic, arriving from Galatia in Turkey to the Celts of Iberia, as well as reaching the British Isles.

Something was considered Celtic if it was Latenian (La Tène culture), however cultures such as the Celtiberian do not exhibit Latenian traits to the same extent as the Gauls, for example.

It is now considered that ancient Celtica had not only one main area and several derivatives but that each of them, arising from a common origin, has distinct characteristics; the Hispanic, the insular, the Central European, the Italic Peninsula and the Galatian Anatolian.

Celticism related druid with Celt, that connection is true, but not unique.

This word makes us see druids as wizards, witches or sorcerers in our minds (influenced by the adventures of Asterix and Obelis, surely). Always working on healing or powerful potions and beverages. But in reality they were philosophers and theologians who, thanks to their demanding education, acquired great prestige in ancient Gaul.

Druids mastered the divinatory art as well as all sciences. Kings cannot make decisions without their consent.

“They are regarded as the most righteous of men. Druids often reflect on the stars and their movement, on the size of the world and the earth, on the power of the immortal gods and their abilities; they transmit all this knowledge to the youth”.

It was with these words of admiration that one of the greatest wise men of antiquity, the philosopher Posidonius of Apamea, referred to the Gaulish Druids.

There can be Celts and no Druids. They are only recorded in Britannia and Gaul. Later Irish Celtic literature shows them in the island, so we understand that it may be an insular process that spread to Gaul.

One of the most important changes to the old paradigm, and the one on which the new conception of Celtic is based, is its language..

Language and culture were supposed to have travelled with the Celts as they expanded from their central European ancestral home. But this was not entirely the case.

John T. Koch defends the idea that the Celtic languages originated as a branch of the Indo-European languages not in Eastern Europe, from where they radiated westwards, but that they arose in Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) among the Celtiberians and neighbouring peoples as a combination of Paleo-Hispanic proto-Indo-European and native non-Indo-European languages (related to Basque), with some Phoenician influence.

From there, they spread eastwards into what was later Gaul (modern France, Germany and its environs), where early forms of Italic and Germanic languages would have developed independently of the Proto-Indo-European ones.

And you might be thinking… What’s all this about?

Well, you are right. But I want to bring to the heart the reason that made me give it this name and I couldn’t do it in any other way than by introducing you a little bit to its history.

“Grian” means “Sun” in Scottish Gaelic.

An Indo-European language of the Celtic branch, a member of the Goidelic or Gaelic languages, which arrived in Scotland around the 5th century when ethnic Celtic Scots from the north of Ireland settled on the west coast. They brought with them a variety of Old Irish which replaced the ancient Pictish language spoken in the area up to that time. Hence its similarity to the Gaelic spoken in Ireland and the Isle of Man.

Its culture, its customs, its “magic”… They are sculpted and take shape in the appearance of this sourdough grian bread. That is why I would like to tell you a little about them so that you can understand, more closely and accurately, the reason why I have chosen this word and this civilisation.