Maypole and the Maltese loaf

Carmel Debono, who owns and runs the thriving Maypole bakery business, was born into baking bread. Both his parents were bakers, and both came from family lines of bakers many generations long. Carmel’s wife Angela is also a baker and has been a mainstay of the Maypole business they have been running together since the early days of their marriage in 1973.

It almost goes without saying that Carmel Debono’s roots are in Hal Qormi as far back as he can trace them. Hal Qormi, or Hal/Casal Curmi as it was once known – taking its name from the family whose estate predated the town – used to go by the name of Casal Fornaro, the town of bakers. Most of Malta’s bakeries were concentrated there, and the traditional association of Hal Qormi with bread-baking has persisted into the present. There are some theories as to why so many bakeries were set up in there, but the most persistent one is that it was close to the Marsa wharves where cargoes of wheat were unloaded, from ships arriving from Sicily during the years of rule of the Order of St John.

In an unbroken line from those days, Carmelo Debono is still baking the traditional Maltese loaf. And as he points out, the tinsila – the piece of dough from the previous day’s batch, which goes into the making of new dough for ‘sourdough’ bread like the Maltese loaf – almost certainly stretches that many hundreds of years back too. “You can’t make dough for Maltese bread without a piece of dough from yesterday’s batch,” he explains. “Any baker who forgets to set some dough aside for tomorrow will ask for some from another baker. That’s the way it’s always been, and bakers are obliged to help each other out. This means that the chain of dough has been kept going since the first Maltese loaf was made, and we don’t know how it started. What we do know is that if the tinsila chain is broken at the same time by all of us bakers, the Maltese loaf will be gone for good.”

The Maltese loaf – which is made from a 3:2 or 7:3 ratio of hard wheat to soft - is one of the concerns dearest to Mr Debono’s heart. The ħobża tal-Malti was called that to distinguish it from the ħobża tal-Franċiż – which was not French bread, but the loaf made for the Knights of St John, who as European foreigners were lumped together under the name of Franċiż in much the same way that European foreigners were all Ingliżi to later generations of Maltese. The ħobża tal-Franċiż, made by many bakeries in our childhood, is already passing into history. Carmel Debono does not want the ħobża tal-Malti to go the same way.

One of the main factors affecting the Maltese loaf is that households no longer buy food on a daily basis, or have bread delivered to their front door (there is rarely anybody at home, anyway). Yet this kind of loaf is at its best when it is warm and crunchy; a day later its consistency is completely different. Maltese bread is no longer part of the Maltese kitchen because people have to go out of their way to buy it, especially when they are at work all day. Maypole has helped solve this by ensuring that its shops are open until 9pm every day of the week – and they are usually mobbed by people buying fresh ħobżiet on the way home from the office. Maypole make a brown Maltese loaf, too – the ħobża samra, which is made from wholegrain wheat. This is not a modern thing – in the past, the whole grain was used for reasons of thrift, and poor people ate dark bread while rich ones ate the more wasteful white. Now dark bread is eaten for health reasons.

Carmel and Angela Debono have realised that the key to the survival of the Maltese loaf lies in changing its distribution system to meet present-day needs. Tastes haven’t changed – everyone still loves a chunk of fresh and crunchy Maltese loaf. But if people can no longer get to the loaf because of time constraints, then the loaf must get to the people. By baking Maltese bread round the clock and staying open until night-time every day including Sunday, Maypole has helped give the Maltese back their loaf.

Maypole Bakery, St Joseph Street, Qormi

– tel 21 488992. There are Maypole shops in Qormi, L-Iklin, Żabbar, Buġibba, Ħamrun and Fgura.