Barley Rusk

Paximadi is bread baked twice: a barley loaf is cut while warm, returned to a cooling oven for hours until every trace of moisture has gone, and then kept for months without spoiling. It was the food of shepherds, sailors and field workers across Crete and the islands, carried out in a bag and made edible again with whatever water and oil were to hand.

Dakos, also called koukouvagia, is the dish that made it famous beyond Crete: a round rusk moistened briefly, covered with coarsely grated ripe tomato, crumbled fresh mizithra or feta, dried oregano and a heavy pour of olive oil. There is no cooking involved at all, so the quality of each of the four components is entirely on show.

Wetting is where people go wrong. A rusk wants a sprinkle of water, or the juice squeezed from the tomato itself, and perhaps thirty seconds to soften, not a soak under the tap, which turns it to porridge. The centre should stay firm enough to give some resistance. Rusks are sold ready split, since attempting to cut a whole one with a knife is hopeless.