Fluffy, brown, aromatic, sweet and savory, with walnuts, raisins, shit, poppy seeds or cocoa, the cookies spread the scent of the holidays on any table. Whether we are talking about the Romanian cozonac, the famous Italian panettone, the French brioche, the German stollen or the Hungarian baigli, the history of the cozonac begins thousands of years ago, along with that of bread. And that's because this apparently banal product is, after all, a special bread, ennobled with ingredients and spices according to recipes that bear the imprint of the civilizations and cultures of 10.000 years of culinary history.
The first cozonac was made in Ancient Egypt
The oldest historical testimonies are the remains of Neolithic communities where a form of shortbread dough was found. The cozonac of those times was just a mixture of crushed grains, soaked and baked on a hot stone. Historians say that the first shortbread may have been made in Ancient Egypt. It was probably sweetened with honey and filled with seeds. Archaeologists have discovered, among the ruins of Egypt, ovens for baking, but also drawings made more than 4.000 years ago, which attest that the Egyptians knew how to make several types of leavened bread, some sweetened with honey and beer.
The cozonac of the Greeks and the Romans
Also in Antiquity, the Greeks made a kind of cake sweetened with honey and sprinkled with nuts. It was called "plakous". The Romans took over the art of baking from the Egyptians and Greeks, including the secret of leavening the dough, and diversified and enriched the recipe, inventing various varieties. It seems that they would have baked the first cakes made from a dough prepared with eggs and butter, in which they also put dried fruits. In the beginning, the Romans had two types of cozonac, and these delicacies, baked in small forms and called libum, were intended only for the gods, as an offering.
Later, larger versions of cozonac appeared, which were served at the feasts of the rich, paired with sweet wine. They were called placenta and were a kind of cake with cheese and raisins, sometimes also hazelnuts.
In 1718, the first time in a cookbook
In the Middle Ages, European bakers made fruit scones. In Great Britain, the first cozonac recipe appeared in a cookbook in 1718, the author recommending that the dough be baked in long and narrow forms. This shape is preserved for the classic cozonac even nowadays. The French used the term "la brioche" for cozonac.
In the XNUMXth century, cozonac was served as the third course at a meal, that is, what we call dessert today. Specialists in the history of gastronomy almost all agree that the cozonac recipe, as we know it today, was also consecrated in the XNUMXth century by Europeans, each nation cultivating its own specialty.
Panettone, the uncrowned king of pastries
Panettone is the traditional dessert in Italy. Invented in Milan, the round cake, initially filled with raisins and candied fruit skins, conquered the world and is now the Christmas dessert preferred not only by Italians.
Over time, the recipe has undergone numerous improvements, so that now the Italian dessert has many variants: with chocolate, amaretto, vanilla, liqueur, etc.
Each Italian family consumes around 2,5 kilograms of panettone per year, and the popularity of the traditional Italian cozonac increases annually by 7-10%, exceeding the borders of the peninsula.
As early as October, panettone boxes appear on store shelves all over the world, from the small ones, with only 2-4 portions, to the huge cakes, in packaging that borrow the colors specific to Christmas.
The legends of the Italians: from "pane di tono" to "pan del Toni"
Numerous legends have been woven around the traditional panettone dessert. Some, supported by documents, say that panettone was known since 1200, when the cake was enriched with honey, filled with raisins or even pumpkin.
The writer Pietro Verri (1728-1797) mentioned "pane di tono" (luxury bread in the Milanese dialect) in which raisins were used, considered bringers of abundance due to their shape, similar to gold coins.
One of the most famous legends says that panettone was invented by the Milanese nobleman Ughetto degli Atellani, who lived around the 1400s. He fell madly in love with Adalgisa, the daughter of a poor baker named Toni. In order to conquer the beautiful girl, the nobleman disguised himself as a baker and became an apprentice at the bakery of the father of the one he loved.
In order to stand out and attract Adalgisa's attention, the nobleman invented a special bread, adding new ingredients to the flour and yeast dough: butter, eggs, raisins and candied fruit skins. The new luxury bread enjoyed great success, the Grand Duke of Milan himself, Ludovico il Moro Sforza, encouraging the marketing of the new assortment under the name "pan del Toni" (Toni's bread).
The noble Ughetto degli Atellani thus conquered not only the Milanese market, but also the hand of the beautiful woman he loved and a fame that made him rich.
Baigli, the Hungarian pastry chef
Baigli – the most beloved traditional Christmas cake in Hungarian communities – is a kind of cozonac, but less tall than the classic cozonac. It has a roll shape and contains a lot of filling. It comes from Silesia, reached Hungary and Transylvania through the Austrians, at the end of the XNUMXth century. The traditional version is with walnut and poppy, but more recently it is also made with chestnut, prune, cherry or marzipan filling.
Stollen, the cake of the Germans, with dispensation from the Pope
A popular cake, but with a different texture than Romanian cake or panettone, is the Germans' stollen, a specific Christmas dessert. Stollen even has its own festival, which is held every year in Dresden. Some say that the shape of the cake symbolizes the swaddled baby Jesus, others say that the shape imitates the entrance to a mine, such as the silver and tin mines in the area .
There are many variations of stollen in German communities, but most contain candied fruit, raisins, spices such as cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon, sometimes marzipan, walnuts or almonds.
Stollen appeared in 1329, at a competition initiated by the bishop of Naumburg, when bakers from the region prepared a sweet bread with butter, raisins and lemon.
Because during the fast the cooks could not use butter, and oil was quite expensive, the representatives of the Royal House decided to write to Pope Nicholas V, who, in 1450, responded, refusing their requests. It was not until 1490 that Pope Innocent VIII sent a letter (known as the Butter Letter) in which he agreed that butter should be used in the royal kitchen during Lent.
The cozonacs of the Romanians
The way to prepare Romanian cozonac was described for the first time in 1841 by the well-known writers of the time, Mihail Kogălniceanu and Costache Negruzzi, in their original book "200 recipes for dishes, cakes and other household chores".
"Take three ounce (1 ounce was about 1 kg - ed.) of flour, make batter with one liter (about 250 g - ed.) of yeast and one liter of milk, adding three whole eggs. Leave it to ferment nicely and put two and a half liters of milk, 18 whole eggs, three liters of melted butter and the necessary salt and knead it until it comes off your hands. Then leave it to rise well and, after they have risen well, turn the dough over, let it sit a little longer, then, making buns, brush them with egg yolk
and put them in the oven".
In the book "The Kitchen of the Romanian Peasant", from 1916, Mihai Lupescu talked about Romanian traditions related to cozonac: "Cozonac are known more in Moldova, Bucovina and Bessarabia. … They have different shapes, according to the vessel in which they are placed. If they are put on a shovel, they look like bread... To make them yellow, saffron paste is put in them, which does not spoil their taste. Put sugar or honey in the buns to make them sweet. Yeast or cheese is added to the cakes, so that they rise well. In some places they have the shape of a horseshoe".
The cozonacs baked in the regions of Romania can be long or round, simple or braided, but they are all Romanian and well grown. Fillings are according to taste and times; we distinguish simple muffins or filled with walnut, poppy, raisins, shit or mixtures.
In Moldova, they also make round and tall cozonac (called babe), unfilled, whose shell is prepared with lots of egg yolks, butter, raisins and grated lemon and orange peel. In Transylvania, poppy seed cakes and a variant with Austrian influences are prepared, with burnt sugar, lots of butter and large chopped walnuts.
The Romanian term cozonac would come from the Greek language, from the word kosonáki; in Greek the word kosóna means doll, a form that is sometimes given to cozonac. The term is used for the same product in Bulgarian as well, with a slight difference in spelling and pronunciation: kozunak.
