THE EVOLUTION OF THE ROMANIAN PASTRY. TRADITIONS, EUROPEAN INFLUENCES, NEW TRENDS

Abstract

: In the last 30 years, the food industry and especially the pastry industry has experienced a spectacular dynamic in the landscape of the Romanian economy. Few of the big companies in the communist period in the field of bakery managed to maintain and adapt to the new, most of them went bankrupt or divided into smaller departments. In the first years after the revolution, Romanian investors look to invest mainly in bakery units specialized in bread, sometimes in simple salt or sesame bagels, white or black bread rolls production. The pastry was not perceived as a profitable business, especially due to the lack of qualified personnel and the lack of ingredients. The communist leadership consid ered the pastry products to be luxury products, for which raw materials would have been needed, but these were mainly sent for export. In this paper we intend to show the recent evolution of the units in the bakery field, highlighting three major trends: restoring in the foreground the Romanian tradition from the interwar period with the reinterpretation of the classic recipes; taking over brands, concepts and products that have been successful in France, Italy and Germany and which are the emblem of a western lifestyle, with the rapid adoption in the confectionery and chocolate fields; adaptation to the in fluence of Hungarian and German gastronomic culture - especially in Transylvania. Last but not least, we will show that pastry is nowadays reluctant for customers, especially due to the use of sugar and margarine-type fats. The new trend is the introduction of butter in pastry following the French model, but this aspect involves high costs, these new products can only be purchased by certain social classes. In our opinion, genuine pastry will become a niche product.