Although the star features of the Sant Jordi festival are undoubtedly roses and books, in recent years culinary aspects have become increasingly important in the celebrations. Every year, the city’s bakeries and patisseries fill their shelves with a variety of cakes, pastries and bread for the Sant Jordi period.

There are many varieties of Sant Jordi cakes and pastries, and bakers use their imagination to recreate the festival’s most distinctive features. One of the most common examples is inspired by a 13th century recipe, and it was first sold in the 1940s and ’50s. It is made using a rectangular braç de gitano or Swiss roll base, filled with cream, egg yoke and truffle. It is decorated with the four stripes of the Catalan flag and the figure of Sant Jordi.

However, the city’s bakers produce new cakes and pastries every year, and some of them are very creative. They always involve the symbols of Sant Jordi Day. Some are pastries with very thin alternating layers that look like the pages of a book, while others use the colours of the senyera, the Catalan flag. There are also some that are shaped like roses, hearts or dragons. Some of the most daring make rose petals edible by coating them with syrup.

Sant Jordi bread is also traditional fare for the day. It was invented by a Barcelona baker who went on to make a fortune. Eduard Crespo came up with the idea in 1980 and it was popularised by the Barcelona Bakers Guild, who had been looking for a special Sant Jordi loaf for some time. It is a pa de pagès loaf made with two different doughs, one using sobrassada [a kind of Majorcan sausage], and the other using cheese. These are arranged in such a way that on slicing the loaf, we see the four red stripes of the Catalan senyera flag.