Bougatsa, the famous Greek delicacy of the breakfast table, has a fascinating history that started in Byzantium and today is the culinary symbol of Thessaloniki.
To hear the story of the iconic delight that is sprinkled with powder sugar and cinnamon is like going back centuries ago to Cappadocia in Byzantium, when people worked hard all day and went back home at night to eat the buttery, crusty filo to sustain their tired bodies.
“Wait a minute…” the reader ponders. Bougatsa is that rich filo pastry filled with sweet cream the Greeks eat with their coffee in the morning. But we’re still in Cappadocia of hundreds of years ago, when bougatsa came to being.
There is no one better to tell the story of bougatsa than Filippos Bandis, who introduces himself as a third generation bougatsa maker, born and raised in Thessaloniki, the world’s capital of bougatsa. As the owner of one of Thessaloniki’s oldest shops of its kind, he passionately shares the story of how this delicacy began and evolved over the centuries.
When bougatsa was only filo
“The original bougatsa that started in Cappadocia was just filo sheets made by housewives for their husbands who were working long hours in the fields,” Bandis tells us. “The filo dough was made with flour, salt, butter and water. It was very nutritious and would not spoil fast. Those who could afford crystalline sugar would sprinkle it over the bougatsa filo, making it even more filling and energy boosting. Along with the flour and the butter protein would keep the men full and strong for hours.”
In those days the filo goody was only made at home and not sold in the market or served in eateries. It was a food only made at home. For a man it would be humiliating to try to source bougatsa outside the house because that would mean that his wife was not a good housemaker. So bougatsa was made only at home and for centuries it was just filo and nothing more, Bandis says.
However, like other foods, the Greek delicacy was modified later on as new ingredients became available and eating habits progressed with the times.
Bougatsa in the Smyrna heyday
In the 18th century, Smyrna was a thriving port city, an international trade hub where cultures mingled and exchanged goods and ideas. It was called “Little Paris” by many and the housewives started to adopt western habits and customs. One of them was the tradition of the five o’clock tea that came from Britain.
The Thessaloniki bougatsa maker says that, “At some point, a housewife had the idea to add something sweet inside the bougatsa, so the sweet bougatsa is born. They called it ‘santé bougatsa’ (santé meaning good health in French) and it was filled with semolina flour and cream. The ingredients were semolina, cream, vanilla and sugar. This is the traditional bougatsa that we have today.”
However, the sweet bougatsa remained at the homes it was made. The Greek delicacy was still homemade not available in markets or eateries. As years passed it slowly started coming out of the good homemakers’ homes; street vendors and eateries started selling the old Greek recipe. Soon bougatsa spread to other Greek cities in Asia Minor, mainly in Constantinople.
By the 19th century it had become widely popular and bougatsa shops and street vendors popped up in all parts of the city. Variations of bougatsa with fillings such as cheese, ground beef, or spinach were added to the sweet one.
Thessaloniki: Home of bougatsa
After the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Bandis continues, Greek refugees who arrived in Thessaloniki, Serres and other parts of northern Greece and Crete brought the tradition with them and opened bougatsa shops. “Many of them came to Thessaloniki, and my grandfather was one of them,” Bandis says.
However, he notes, there were bougatsa makers in Thessaloniki since the 1800s. “After looking at the city records,” he says, “we found that the first license for a bougatsa shop in Thessaloniki was issued in 1896. It was called “Dodoni” and baked the filo in a wood-fired oven. The first bougatsa makers union was established in 1914. There were 42 makers and many of them were from Ioannina, with several Jewish names among them.”
“Therefore there were bougatsa shops in Thessaloniki before the Asia Minor Catastrophe. As a city we have a long tradition in making it.”
In the case of the Bandis family, the current owner’s grandfather, also named Filippos Bandis, came from Caesarea where as a kid he was working as a helper at a bougatsa shop. “After the catastrophe he came here and brought his skill. He never owned a shop; he was working for others to feed his family. He had five children and those were hard times, the 1930s and 1940s.”
It was Filippos’ father, Dimitris Bandis, who opened the family’s first shop in 1969, now completing 55 years of operation. “We continue the family history. Now I am the one who runs the store, and I continue to make the old Greek delicacy the traditional way, like my pop and grandpop used to make it, and with the best ingredients.”
Fifteen varieties
The Thessaloniki bougatsa maker is proud of his work and hopes his three sons will carry on the family tradition. Even though sales went through a crisis as the eating habits of Greeks have changed, Bandis says he wants to revive the Greek delicacy.
While he continues on his family’s steps, he decided to add a modern touch to a traditional food. Now he makes 15 kinds of bougatsa, all with the traditional filo, though.
“Bougatsa went through a crisis as Greek people turned to other foods. So in the past ten years I decided to make about 15 variations. One of them is the American bougatsa, as I have called it, which includes ingredients that are popular in America like, gouda cheese, kasseri cheese, ham and bacon and I’ve given it the shape of a horseshoe, in honor of the American cowboys, so to speak.”
Among the 15 different kinds of bougatsa, Bandis decided to revive the old fashioned kind, the plain filo one. The response was unexpected, as elderly people started coming to his shop for a nostalgic taste of their childhood.
“I saw people 70, 80 years old and older coming in and eating the plain bougatsa, moved with emotion,” he says. One of them started crying and I asked him ‘what happened.’ He told me that in the old days when kids didn’t have money to buy the one with cream, they were eating the filo crumbs that the owner was gathering in the corner of the pan and was selling it for a penny. For them it was like eating the plain bougatsa of the old days. He remembered times of poverty, when people ate only filo crumbs because they couldn’t afford a bougatsa with cream.”
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