The Journey to Guáyiga Bread
Text by Olivier Bur
Photos by José Rozón
After passing the plantain leaves quickly through the fire to make them pliable, Marileyda Correa fills them with the sticky white guáyiga starch and coconut bread dough.
The smell of burnt leaves, the distinct smoky flavor and a stick of bread representing Dominican culinary heritage: The taxing procedure of the guáyiga bread is a craft and a skill that families have passed on for generations. Days of physical work are spent searching, foraging and harvesting the wild guáyiga plants. Then comes the peeling, grinding, soaking, washing, drying and mixing to finally be wrapped in plantain leaves, beach grape leaves or almond leaves. Finally, it’s baked in self-built ovens to then be sold for a few pesos on the street. Demanding and unique, it’s not even close to being profitable enough to keep a family alive.
The Process
Day 1: Foraging
The hills around the small town of Yaguate seem untouched. We drive past the police station and soon arrive to a dead end with no houses in sight and only a few plantain plantations like patches on the green hills. This is where we will go forage the guáyiga root—poisonous when it’s raw—to prepare the ancient bread. From here on, we will be going by foot, equipped with two rice bags, an ax, two machetes and a bottle of water.
The guáyiga plant can be found all over the Dominican Republic, but the climate and soil vary, affecting the amount of starch the root will contain when ripe. It’s hot and humid, and I’m already sweaty and thirsty after taking a few steps into and through the bushes.
Trekking through the woods to gather the guáyiga with the starchiest roots is the first step in this two-day process.
We find the guáyiga plants, and Pedro shows and explains the importance of soil quality and how to spot it. The goal is to harvest roots containing as much starch as possible; I’m told to look out the bigger plants with dark and dry soil underneath them. First, I’m instructed to cut away the leaves of the plant, using a machete. Afterward, Pedro uses an ax to get the strong root out of the hard soil.
The root looks like mapuey or yautia, but larger. Pedro checks the ripeness by cutting off a piece to look at the whiteness of the starch.
While getting deeper and deeper into the forest, we do our best not to disturb any beehives or cross paths with snakes. After two hours, we have filled half a rice bag. Pedro normally goes to another hill, to fill the bags up. To make 100 breads, they need two full bags, which is a little over 100 kilos of guáyiga roots.
Guáyiga is grated with a grinder made from an old oil barrel that’s nailed to a table.
Processing the Root to Starch
Hours later and back in Duveaux, we start processing the root. By the end of the day, we will have a container full of starch. Marileyda and I sit under an acerola tree (known as Barbados cherry or Dominican cherry) chatting while we peel the roots. The best way to do that is by continuously hitting the blade against the firm root. Marileyda tells me not to cut away too much of the first white layer under the tough and dirty skin. The closer you get to the core, the less starch it contains. I’m constantly amazed by how delicate but demanding this job is, how much knowledge and practice it takes to be efficient but not wasting the valuable starch.
Halfway through the peeling, Pedro sets up the wooden table next to us and attaches a huge and very sharp grinder with four iron nails. On this grinder, made out of a bent oil barrel with holes and sharp corners (made by hitting iron nails trough with a hammer) the guáyiga will get grated. It’s exhausting to grind the roots by hand, and I have to stay focused so my hand doesn’t slip on the sharp blade. The color of the grated mash changes from white to brown as the root oxidizes fast.
To wash out the starch from the guáyiga, we now set up a strainer and place a deep plastic container underneath. Pedro slowly pours water over the mash, while I’m told to mix and squeeze it, to press out the starch that gets strained into the container. What stays in the net cannot be eaten, since it contains the poisonous toxin cycasin.
The milky liquid that is left in the plastic container is now left to set for a few hours. When the starch has sunk to the bottom, it is easier to pour out the excess water. After that, we leave the starch to dry, covering the plastic container with a towel. After a long day of physical work and, for me, new experiences, we end the day. We can only continue the process tomorrow.
Ground coconut is added to make the guáyiga starch into a smooth, sticky dough.
Day 2 - Making the Bread
After a sweet cup of coffee at 9 a.m., we start the second day of making guáyiga bread. The top layer of the starch in the plastic container turned brown overnight. It doesn’t affect the quality of the bread, but it changes the color. Marileyda always separates the top layer from the starch underneath that is white and not oxidized. She won´t throw the top layer away, but she separates them in the process.
Angel opens around 10 coconuts with a machete and grinds the coconut flesh by hand. Meanwhile, a fire is made, and we start mixing half of the starch with water and a bit of salt. The mixture is placed over the wood-fired fogón, and with constant stirring, the milky mixture starts to heat up and thicken.
The smoke burns in my eyes, but I’m told not to stop stirring the liquid. Once it reaches the boiling point, the whole liquid turns into a gummy mass and becomes almost clear. The clear mass is now mixed in with the other part of the dried starch. We carefully dissolve the small clumps of starch, add ground coconut and more salt. The ground coconut is added to change the texture and to make the starchy guáyiga mass smoother. We keep mixing all of the ingredients together by hand until we have created a white homogenous mass.
Meanwhile, Pedro and Angel start heating up the charcoal in their self-built oven behind the house. After finishing the dough and washing our hands, Marileyda and I cut a few plantain leaves. We pass them through the fire quickly, so they become softer and easier to work with. Plantain leaves have the same nonstick function as a Teflon pan. Marileyda shows me how to fill and wrap the mixture into the leaves. The technique is similar to how a Mexican tamal or a pastel en hoja is prepared.
The very last step of the process is to bake the breads. They are placed on a tray in the oven and then turned from time to time, while baking. The smell of the burnt plantain leaves is signaling when the breads are ready. Burning the leaves make sure that the dough gets a golden crust. As the bread cools down, the smoky and unique flavor intensifies.
The long, narrow bread is cooked over a wood fire. The family typically makes about 100 loaves.
Preserving a Culinary Heritage
When we visited a family living outside busy San Cristobal, we thought we were there to document the preservation of Dominican cooking techniques and culinary traditions. How far off we were. How romanticized our viewpoint was. We might have realized a lot more during our visit, than how to turn a poisonous root into a stick of bread.
The Correa family consists of the calm but decisive Joselo, tireless Marileyda, forever dancing to her loud merengue blasting out of the broken speakers, plus their four children and grandkids. Joselo and Marileyda have been making guáyiga bread for the last 20 years, taught by Marileyda’s mother.
They made the bread their own Sunday tradition. The sharp but familiar smell of the baked guáyiga bread spread, and before long, there were others who wanted to share their Sunday tradition.
The whole family got involved. The foraging and harvesting of the guáyiga roots are made by Joselo and his two sons, Angel and Pedro. When the roots are collected, they get peeled, grated, soaked and then drained several times to wash out the poison. The process is labor intensive, and the whole family is required to contribute and help, to get the work done.
Marileyda wraps the finished paste into banana leaves, while Joselo makes a fire to bake them. The younger daughter, Angela, used to be the one who sold the breads on the street. They would make and sell 100 breads every weekend and earn DOP 20,000 (around $350 U.S. dollars) per month for the communal work.
When the world turned upside down in 2020, the Correa family could no longer sell breads, and their only source of income, abruptly stopped. The family wanted to respect the rules that the government had set, to reduce the spread of the virus, but they were left without income and had to look elsewhere for work.
It’s a family affair, making guáyiga bread. Marileyda and Joselo’s children and grandchildren help out.
Joselo had to accept a job and move to a town close by, taking care of a chicken farm. He has a salary of DOP 16,000, but Marileyda was left at home, taking care of their four children and grandkids. Angel and Pedro took some spare day jobs, working on private haciendas owned by wealthy people from the city. The two sons earn up to DOP 1,000 per day for far less intense work than the demanding and physical work that making guáyiga breads involves. The older daughter, Cristina, is struggling to take care of own two kids, because of heavy migraine attacks. Angela got pregnant and was due only a few weeks after we visited.
Marileyda flows around like a whirlwind, with a hand in everything from morning until the next day knocks on the door. Keeping the Sunday tradition alive is no longer of importance to her.
Meeting families around the island who cook with indigenous techniques and ingredients, opens my curiosity and fills my blanks. These families are often the ones struggling and the ones who can’t give their kids an education. The parents can’t always read and write and can only pass on recipes by practice. Getting out of poverty is not even something to consider.
There was so much I wanted to ask. But who am I to convince this family to stick to their cultural heritage and culinary traditions? Would I choose to make my living by hard work and heavy labor or to make the money I needed to survive more efficient? Who am I to tell this family that if they don’t keep the tradition of this particular bread alive, it might be forgotten? In what position am I, with access to education and social security, to ask for more?
As we are standing there, anywhere, around a fire, on the side of a road or in someone’s backyard, finding momentary happiness in indulging in these dishes and traditions, I sometimes find myself only allowed to observe and sometimes I am dragged into tiny kitchens to taste, smell and touch. However, the pots are boiling with pride over what they know best: feeding, sharing and keeping traditions alive.
