Salt pans Stories by the Wood-fired Oven and the Movie Screen

On June 18, 2025, the second event of the sixth edition of the Saltpan Cuisine project took place at the Museum of Saltmaking.

Once again, the museum’s wood-fired oven was filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread, prepared by Anita Dessardo, who has been connected to the saltpans her entire life. As a child, she brought lunch to her father working in the salt fields, and later helped her husband with salt harvesting in the Lucija and Sečovlje saltpans. She also worked in the former salt warehouses in Portorož, first in the packing area and later as a cook in the canteen.

At the event, she demonstrated the entire process of bread-making, from kneading the dough to baking. Members of the ethnographic group “La Famea dei salineri” also shared interesting details and traditions of how bread was baked in the saltpans in the past.

The event continued with a screening of the film The Story of Salt, created in 2004 by Vesna Črnivec, Igor Žabjek, and Primož Pipan. Also present was Dr. Primož Pipan, a research fellow at the Anton Melik Geographical Institute of the ZRC SAZU and a member of the project group A Grain of Salt: Crystallizing Coexistence – Saltmaking as Experiential Environmental Wisdom, led by the Scientific Research Centre of Koper, which has been one of the co-organizers of the Saltpan Cuisine project for the second consecutive year.

After the screening, Dr. Pipan presented the ethnological-renovation volunteer camps that he led for several years at the Saltmaking Museum. The idea for the international work camps in the Sečovlje saltpans was born from him and his fellow geography student Uroš Košir. Following the success of the first camp in 1999, many others were organized in the years to follow. Dr. Pipan emphasized the value of this type of collaboration in preserving intangible cultural heritage and highlighted the unique experiences gained by participants living and working in the special environment of the saltpans.

This was followed by a discussion on the continuation of such and other related activities, moderated by Veronika Bjelica from the Maritime Museum of Piran.

Visitors were then invited to view the museum collection. Younger attendees had the chance to shape small loaves from real bread dough and, as was once done in the old saltpans, mark them with bread stamps or other symbols and bake them in the wood-fired oven.

At the conclusion of the event, all guests were able to taste freshly baked bread straight from the museum’s wood oven.

The event was musically enriched by the performance of Fritule – the first Slovenian female klapa group.

Photos: Primož Pipan and Maruša Bizjak