The Traditional Venezuelan Pan De Jamon

Mirelys Garcia
English 160-75
Essay # 4
05/14/12
The Traditional Venezuelan Pan de Jamon
Origins
As is customary in the mainstream of the kitchen's best dishes have been prepared at home, and tradition does remain for generations before being taken to the restaurant tables, which did not happen with the Pan de Jamon. The process stared in a bakery and then was taken to the homes.Since it was established in a bakery most of the people tried it and they loved it. Bakeries saw the success that Pan de Jamon had, and that a lot of people consumed it with great joy. The Pan de Jamon was so famous that was extended throughout the country.
According to Adriana Lopez, “Pan de Jamon is special dish is eaten in Venezuela only during the holiday season in December. It originatedback in 1905, in Caracas by the Ramella Bakery; it is a 100 percent original and exclusive Venezuelan recipe. It was created as a way of using bits and pieces of leftover holiday ham (imported from Spain at the time) and sold to customers.” (Lopez). “This stuffed bread was being touted by other bakeries as Montalban and Banchs, which incorporated it among its products.” (Cuando era Chamos -Recuerdos de Venezuela).
Varieties
By 1920 olives and raisins were added by the bakeries Montalban and Banchs (Cuando era Chamos - Recuerdos de Venezuela). Adriana Lopez said, “Nowadays people add bacon instead of ham, or use other fillings such as salmon or turkey.” (Lopez). Now some people will add other ingredients, and most of the Venezuelans like to create new and better flavors to satisfy thepalate. Pan de Jamon lately went through some that go beyond the original recipe. Some bakeries instead of using pig ham they use turkey because of religions matters or because of medical problems (Popic). Other versions are prepared with puff pastry, rich in butter and crunchier. Also there are vegetarian varieties.
Ingredients
Pan de Jamon is mixed like us Venezuelans, because this recipe hasingredients from other places like Europe and Asia. Venezuelans adapted these ingredients that we now harvest them at Venezuela. Also 50 years ago Venezuela was influence by Italians, and Portuguese. The Italians and Portuguese were the ones who started bakeries with different kinds of bread which it favored the tradition of eating Pan de Jamon in Christmas. The traditional recipe of this stuffedbread is ham (the higher the quality, the better the result), smoked bacon, raisins, and olives.
The bread is made of wheat and the wheat was originally brought from the Europeans on the 1600s to Venezuela. Europeans cultivated the wheat grain in Venezuela. Then, they started exporting the wheat grain to other places to make it into wheat flour. The wheat flour was imported to Venezuela to make thebread, wrote Fabricio Vivas (Vivas). In 1920 the Americans established companies in Venezuela that processed the wheat grains into wheat flour; one of these companies is called Robin Hood (Morales). Currently, great amount of the wheat flour is still imported from other places like USA, and another portion processed in Venezuela.
As for the ham and the smoked bacon, they were imported from Spainand USA by the end of 1800. They come from the company "Ferris" (established in New York in 1836), which are very popular in our country; since the 1970s through a Denmark company called “Plumrose” Venezuela produces ham and the smoked bacon, according to Maria Brito (Brito). About raisins, until the 20th Century they were produced mainly in the Mediterranean regions, specifically in Málaga,Spain. Now huge quantities come from California and Australia. Venezuela produces grapes, but it doesn't produce raisins, these are imported from Spain and California (Vivas).
Olive is a fruit that has been agriculturally exploited from three continents (Africa, Asia and Europe). Originally this appeared in ancient Mesopotamia (Iran and Syria, today) 4,000 years before Christ; from there it...