Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and collaboration: Cristiane Titoneli
Preamble
It was in an imposing building located at Rua Sacadura Cabral 290 that the Moinho Fluminense mill operated in the Gamboa district of Rio de Janeiro for just over 130 years.
Inspired by the factories that sprang up in the UK during the Industrial Revolution, it stood out not as a simple physical object, but also as a landmark for the city and the local community. For more than a century, this complex was part of the collective history of the people of Rio, both native-born cariocas and immigrants settling in the city. In fact, many of them worked at this mill, including its first owners, who belonged to Rio’s Italian community.
As construction drew to a close, the local population probably wondered at the size of this complex, with its high walls, huge silos and tall chimneys, powerful and contrasting with the rest of the city, where two-story townhouses still prevailed. Particularly noteworthy on both sides of its name – MOINHO FLUMINENSE – on the main façade were the images of a terrifying and intriguing beast that had never been seen in these tropical lands: an animal with the head, gilded feathers and claws of an eagle, but with the body and hind legs of a lion. The mythological figure of the legendary gryphon (whose name comes from the Greek gryphos, meaning ‘eagle-lion’) was still unknown at that time.
It was perhaps not by chance that the architects and proprietors of this business selected this emblem to represent the enterprise. In Greek mythology, gryphons symbolize power, protection and loyalty; in European folklore, they also represent the virtues of wisdom and strength. This was consequently the perfect symbol for an establishment grinding wheat into flour: a grain historically associated with the exaltation of life and used as an allegory in several religions.
Among the Egyptians, the appearance of wheat was credited to Isis, a powerful goddess worshipped as a model mother and ideal wife, the protector of nature and magic. Among the Phoenicians, Dagon was the god of grains and farm produce. The Hindus associate wheat with Brama, representing the active power of creation in the universe; Muslims associate it with the Archangel Michael, and Christians with their God.
Although there is no agreement over the origin of this cereal, archaeological remains found in Southeast Asia indicate that wheat appeared some 15,000 years B.C. Some sources indicate that wheat was initially eaten raw, merely searing off the fibrous husks through fire or sunlight. Other researchers mention that wheat was originally eaten after it was popped, just as we do today when heating maize kernels to make popcorn.
However, the origin of bread is more trustworthy. Hieroglyphed tombs discovered along the River Nile record not only growing, harvesting and grinding wheat, but also bread-making in the Middle East. Originally, white flour was used, obtained after sifting crushed grains, to which acorns were added. Hard and dry, they could not be eaten immediately, because they were very bitter. After the dough was prepared, it was baked on hot stones or under ashes. It was only around 7000 A.D. that the Egyptians began to bake bread in clay ovens, which at that time covered areas the size of modern football pitches.
The first bakery seems to have appeared around 3000 A.D. in the town of Gizah in Egypt. Bread was so important to the Egyptians that each Pharaoh had their own bakeries, which were always buried with them. Their fascination with this food prompted the Greeks to nickname them ‘bread eaters’ (arthophagoi). The link between bread and power was so strong among the Egyptians that they assigned this food a monetary value, allowing its use as a means of payment: a day’s work was worth three loaves and two mugs of beer.
Geographically blessed and trading intensively with some of the Greek islands, Egypt also brought bread to Europe in 250 A.D., where it soon became a staple food in Ancient Rome. Probably taught by the Greeks, the Romans baked bread in public ovens, using yeast extracted from wine vat foam. This was later replaced by yeast sourced from beer brewing operations, which improved its characteristics considerably.
It was in Rome that the first official bakers’ guild was set up, whose members were viewed as privileged, rewarded with exemption from some taxes and duties. The Romans ranked breadmaking as an art, at the same level as sculpture, architecture and literature. After the fall of the Roman Empire, public bakeries were closed and breadmaking became a purely domestic chore during the early Middle Ages. During this time, breadmaking techniques gradually faded into obscurity, to the extent that the wheat was no longer fermented, and the quality dropped considerably.
Breadmaking began to progress again only during the XII century, this time in France. Five centuries later, France was to be enshrined as the world’s breadmaking hub, through adopting techniques that were sophisticated for those times. By the XVI century – as Portuguese adventurers set foot in the New World for the first time – bread and other wheat products were already quite well known among the colonizers. However, many historical events were still to occur in these strange lands before wheat was milled on as large a scale as it was in Europe. This began in Rio de Janeiro, with Portuguese caravels mooring at the foot of the Morro Cara de Cão hill.
Four hundred years later, the trailblazing Moinho Fluminense mill was to set up its machines and silos in the Gamboa district, where it would store and grind wheat, then processing and shipping out flour. There in the Praça da Harmonia plaza, it would leave its mark on the history and spirit of the metropolis forever.