The dietary habits of the people of yester Crete are closely associated with 'paksimadi', the double-baked bread of Crete. Capable of preserving its freshness and wholesome flavour due to slow baking and proper ingredients, paksimadi has been the daily diet companion to Cretans for ages.

In a day and age when it was difficult to provide the family table with fresh bread on demand, you had to work out a way to preserve bread. The freshly baked bread would be cut into thick slices and then put back into the stove to be dried. The end-product was a tasteful, hard to break, fibre-filled toasted bread that you had to moist with a little bit of water to eat.

The people of Crete never rejected Paksimadi from their daily menu: even if the 20 th century social prosperity filled the fridge with countless dietary options -at the cost of long-term health- the average household still nowadays prepare a quick snack by wetting a piece of Paksimadi, pour a bit of extra virgin olive oil over it, a pinch of salt, sprinkle some dried oregano and accompany it with a slice of local cheese. This otherwise plain dish contains practically everything your body needs: fiber, carbohydrates, sugars, good quality fat, iron etc.

Purity, health and palatal delight, all confined in a plain old piece of dry bread!