The Olot tart of Can Carbasseres: "I am the first woman in five generations of the family to work in the workshop"

OlotIt's Monday, market day in Olot, and Sant Rafel street is a hive of people going in and out of the Can Carbasseres pastry shop. It has a large display window, showing a sample of what can be bought inside. On the sign, with the name, there is a date: 1884. I go inside, and I find a whole family working there. The father, Jordi Vilanova, is retired, and talks to the customers queuing to buy; the mother, Judith Ribera, serves behind the counter, and the children, Alba and Nil Vilanova, are in the workshop. “I am the first woman in the family in five generations to work in the workshop,” says Alba. She is the first to braid the tortells from Can Carbasseres, which are known throughout Catalonia, and which can be eaten as both sweet and savory dishes.

Next to the ring cake, there are other signature creations. The lardons cake is also one. They make them all year round, every day. In many towns they are linked to Carnival and Sant Joan, but at Can Carbasseres they are an everyday thing. In the bakery, below the shop, the wooden drawers have the dough resting, and little by little they will introduce it into the wood-fired oven, which “works with firewood; no gas”, Jordi, known as Toti, and his sons tell me, who assure that there are no ovens like theirs left in Catalonia. “People want to control the exact temperature at all times; we work in a different way,” they state. First they put the firewood inside and light the fire; then they move everything to one side, embers included, and then in the middle is where they introduce the doughs with the help of a shovel, which they will have previously left to rest in the drawer-shaped troughs. When the oven is very hot, they start putting in the doughs that need more temperature; the ring cakes and the lardons cakes are the last ones.

A recipe made from memory, never written

Can Carbasseres has always been in the family, and the recipe for the braided tortell is known only to them. “We don't have it written down anywhere, nor will we. And not even our mother could explain it, because only those of us in the workshop know it,” say Alba and Nil, who add that they don't think it's dangerous not to have it written down. “We can tell you what the ingredients are, which are flour, sourdough, egg, Paris yeast, sugar, aniseed,” and that's it. The braiding is a play of hands, because you have to stretch the dough, roll it, close it. “Perhaps we have a video posted on social media showing how the braiding is done,” comments Nil. The fact is that they make many every day; on market days, even more: “Perhaps seventy or eighty on Mondays, because the whole region comes to Olot.” The rest of the days are quieter.

Next to the two famous coques (there are three different sizes of tortells), there are also round breads. “Our father started making them about twenty-five years ago. First, we only made them with wheat, but now also with buckwheat flour, spelt, cornmeal.” They are fluffy breads, which are eaten very quickly. There are some with chocolate. “We made them because we wanted to offer a snack, to create an alternative to pastries, and that’s how the chocolate breads came about,” comments Alba.

Back to the tortells, and I ask the family about their origin. “It’s a preparation that comes from the baker's world, not the pastry chef's,” says the father: they have always made it with a round shape and a hole in the middle. As it dates from the late 19th century, Jordi Vilanova opines that it is of Jewish origin. For Rams, the palm was blessed with the tortell hanging from the arm. In any case, it is a sugar-balanced sweet, which in Olot and the region is eaten for breakfast, as a snack, or even as bread to accompany meals or to eat with cured meats or cheeses. “Once a competition was held in Olot to explain ways to eat the tortell, and eighty different ways came out: with jam, chocolate, with pâté and more”.

With all the questions asked about the production, I focus on the succession. Alba and Nil are the fifth generation. Alba started at twenty-seven years old: she had finished her degree in journalism and two master's degrees, one in communication management and the other in cultural management. “And if I were to start again, I would choose to study journalism and the two master's degrees again; it's just that when I finished studying, I decided I wanted to work in the family workshop,” explains Alba. Her father listens to her, and says that she was the one who wanted to do it and that she expressed it to the family. No woman before, none of the four generations before her, had entered the workshop, on the ground floor of the listed building on Sant Rafel street in Olot, to work there. She has been the first, and she assures that she likes the job. She combines it between the workshop and the counter. Downstairs, she does the work with her brother Nil, who started at 17 years old; she, ten years later, when she had finished all her studies. “I don't know if any woman in the family had considered it before, but I have been very clear about it,” concludes Alba Vilanova.