Founded on 8 June 2024, Padaria Vila Fresca is a family project that brings together two unusual backgrounds in the world of artisan baking: Cláudia Guerreiro, a food engineer, and Paulo Estorninho, a graduate in Pharmaceutical Sciences. This combination is not just a curious detail, but a key to understanding the bakery. It helps to explain the attention to the process, health and origin of the ingredients that defines this bakery in Vila Franca de Xira.
The starting point is clear: to revive traditional artisan baking practices, working with miller's flour, natural and prolonged fermentation, and a close relationship with small producers in the region. Sustainability and appreciation of the territory are not just slogans, but criteria for everyday work.
It was in this spirit that the challenge of creating the Biscoito das Linhas (Biscuit of the Lines) was born, developed in partnership with the Historical Route of the Lines of Torres Vedras. The inspiration came from the dry biscuits of the early 19th century, associated with the French Invasions of Portugal — foods designed to withstand time, marches and scarcity. An austere, almost thankless starting point. However, Cláudia and Paulo achieved what seemed unlikely: transforming a biscuit designed for the harshness of the Peninsular War into something that, without betraying its origins, makes you want to eat it... and repeat.
The recipe was intelligently reinterpreted, replacing animal fats with olive oil and using barbela wheat, a native Portuguese variety that is easier to digest and low in gluten. The result is a biscuit with a firm but surprisingly pleasant texture, with an open flavour and that rare balance that makes you inevitably reach for another.
Each biscuit is marked with three lines, symbolically evoking the three lines of defence of the Lines of Torres Vedras. A simple gesture that transforms the biscuit into a small object of memory, without folklore or theatricality.
One is left with the suspicion — impossible to prove, but easy to imagine — that if the biscuits from two hundred years ago had this flavour, they would hardly have survived a whole day in the soldiers' rucksacks. Today, fortunately, they do not have to withstand forced marches: they only have to last a few minutes on the table.
More than just a food product, the Biscoito das Linhas is a bridge between heritage, gastronomy and territory. An edible tribute to the ingenuity and resilience of the communities that built the fortifications, showing that historical memory can also be preserved — and savoured.
Ideal to accompany a coffee or tea, to share or offer, Biscoito das Linhas is a journey into the past made with rigour, intelligence and pleasure.
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