When you ask a Portuguese what his or her favourite cake is, the answer is quick — even if you can always change your mind. We don’t make these cakes of our preference at home, and not even our mothers or grandmothers can bake them — we just don’t take that risk.

It’s not worth the effort, as we can trust the talent and mastery of the bakers who bring them to any counter or shop window of a cake shop or café, throughout the country, everyday. We also know always where to find them, and also to identify the real “urban myths” of the towns we live in, which offer us the biggest, the sweetest or simply the most delirious variations of these cakes.

Portuguese semi-industrial bakery is a unique component of our gastronomical heritage. Shapes and contents are replicated every night in tens of bakeries and small factories scattered over the country, always in the same way, in a perpetuation of a mould or recipe that we know nothing of, but that we recognise immediately.

It is also a phenomenon exclusive to our country; no other has such a richness in what we call “everyday bakery”. Unlike French and Central European “haute pâtisserie”, or exotic Asian specialities, there is nothing sophisticated about this bakery that feeds our days in Portugal. The recipes can be secret, but its results are widely available to all of us — from the finest traditional pâtisseries to high school bars, from train stations and airports to the corner café.

Fabrico Próprio is a book, a workshop and a series of launches created by Portuguese designers Rita João, Pedro Ferreira and Frederico Duarte. Please contribute and email us if you have comments or questions!

Thanks