Sea Bream

The sea bream or Besugo as it is known in Spanish, is a very popular fish available in all the supermarkets in Spain. This is another recipe that we have pulled from the database, to give you a simple but tasty example of Spanish cooking.

The common bream‘s home range is Europe north of the Alps and Pyrenees, as well as the Balkans. It is found as far east as the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and the Aral Sea.

The bream is usually 30 to 55 centimetres (12 to 22 in) long, though some specimens of 75 centimetres (30 in) have been recorded; it usually weighs 2 to 4 kilograms (4.4 to 8.8 lb).

It has a laterally flattened and high-backed body and a slightly undershot mouth. It is a silvery grey colour, though older fish can be bronze-coloured especially in clear waters. The fins are greyish to black, but never reddish.

The common bream can easily be confused with the silver or white bream (Blicca bjoerkna), in particular at the younger stages (see picture). The most reliable method of distinguishing these species is by counting the scales in a straight line downwards from the first ray of the dorsal fin to the lateral line. Silver bream has fewer than ten rows of scales, common bream has eleven or more. At the adult stage the reddish tint of the pectoral fin of the silver bream is diagnostic. Like other Cyprinidae, common bream can easily hybridise with other species, and hybrids with roach (Rutilus rutilus) can be very difficult to distinguish from pure-bred bream.

The common bream lives in schools near the bottom. At night common bream can feed close to the shore and in clear waters with sandy bottoms feeding pits can be seen during daytime. The fish’s protractile mouth helps it dig for chironomid larvae, Tubifex worms, bivalves, and gastropods. The bream eats water plants and plankton as well.

In very turbid waters common bream can occur in large numbers, which may result in a shortage of bottom-living prey such as chironomids. The bream is then forced to live by filter feeding with its gill rakers, Daphnia water fleas being the main prey. As the fish grows, the gill rakers become too far apart to catch small prey and the bream will not then grow bigger than 40 centimetres (16 in). If a common bream is malnourished it can develop a so-called knife back: a sharp edge along its back.

Sea bream with tomatoes

Besugo a la espalda con tomates

• 4 sea bream
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 lemon
• Olive oil
• Herbs Provençale
• Black pepper
• Salt

Cut the fins off the sea bream with kitchen shears and using a sharp knife remove the heads.

Descale the fish and open up the middle for the spine supporting the backbone and sliding the knife horizontally to tail, so the fish will be open like a book. Then gut and clean them out without removing the spine.

Wash the lemon and cut into slices. Arrange the sliced tomatoes on a baking tray greased with oil.

Place the bream on the lemon slices open end up, cover with slices of Iemon and sprinkle with herbs. Season and sprinkle with a little olive oil. Bake 15 minutes at 180 ° C and serve.

If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest.

Get the best website builder available anywhere –SBI! Click here for more information

Return from bream to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites: