CURA's Bread Moment: A Tribute to Portuguese Terroir

Chef Rodolfo Lavrador, at the helm of the one Michelin-starred restaurant, CURA, at Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon, has been steadily placing the restaurant at the centre of Lisbon’s gastronomic spotlight by delighting diners with his thoughtful, elevated, and deeply personal approach to cuisine. Hard at work behind the scenes, alongside Sous Chef Marina Garcia, the two serve as the creative minds behind CURA’s ever-evolving tasting menus and bread. 

At CURA bread earns its own spotlight, arriving halfway through the tasting menu not as a side dish, but as a culinary statement. This is the bread moment, a signature course that distils centuries of history, terroir, and technique into something deceptively simple, a loaf and milk bread.

At its heart is Barbela wheat, a nearly forgotten variety cultivated in Portugal since the eighth century. Once facing extinction, it has been lovingly brought back by farmers committed to preserving ancestral grains. Deep-rooted and resilient, Barbela thrives where modern wheat fails, drawing nutrients from the earth that lend it a distinct, nutty complexity. The bread flour is stone-milled to preserve its natural oils and selenium-rich profile. It is further enriched with carob, a natural source of fibre that adds a subtle sweetness and deepens the bread's flavour with earthy, chocolatey undertones, becoming the soul of CURA’s ancient wheat bread.

Making the bread is a 26-hour labour of love: beginning with autolysis, then moving through slow fermentation, shaping, resting in bannetons, and finally baking just before service. The result is a loaf that’s dense yet delicate, robust yet refined, a living tribute to Portugal’s culinary heritage.

Beside it comes CURA’s milk bread, feather-light and impossibly fluffy. A seasonally inspired bread that borrows the Japanese yudane method, where boiling water is added to flour to create an exceptional softness. Its flavours shift with the seasons, from the Portuguese Folar, a traditional Easter bread scented with cinnamon and lemon, to variations featuring garlic or algae, highlighting the richness of Portuguese produce. The result is a cloud-like roll, warm with spice and memory.

Both breads are served with green olive oil, a cold-pressed blend of Cobrançosa, Picual, Arbequina, and Galega olives, picked early to preserve their lively acidity. Alongside, butter from Ilha do Pico in the Azores, which is aged at room temperature for two weeks to develop rich umami notes, then finished with toasted yogurt powder and cocoa creating an unexpected and indulgent twist.

Much has been written about bread. A simple combination of water and flour, it is one of humanity’s oldest recipes with its roots stretching back over 10,000 years to Neolithic firestones and flatbreads in the Jordan Valley. 

At CURA, this ancient food becomes something new again, not just nourishment, but narrative. A course that tells a story. A moment to be remembered.