title: Tracta (dough)
text: # Tracta (dough)
  
  Tracta, tractum (Ancient Greek: τρακτὸς, τρακτόν), also called laganon, laganum, or lagana (Greek: λάγανον) was a kind of drawn out or rolled-out pastry dough in Roman and Greek cuisines.
  
  What exactly it was is unclear: "Latin tracta... appears to be a kind of pastry. It is hard to be sure, because its making is never described fully"; and it may have meant different things at different periods. Laganon/laganum was at different periods an unleavened bread, a pancake, or later, perhaps a sort of pasta.
  
  Tracta is mentioned in the Apicius as a thickener for liquids. Vehling's translation of Apicius glosses it as "a piece of pastry, a round bread or roll in this case, stale, best suited for this purpose." Perry compares it to a "ship's biscuit".
  
  It is also mentioned in Cato the Elder's recipe for placenta cake, layered with cheese.
  
  Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae mentions a kind of cake called καπυρίδια, "known as τράκτα", which uses a bread dough, but is baked differently.
  
  Some writers connect it to modern Italian lasagne, of which it is the etymon, but most authors deny that it was pasta.
  
  There is a modern Greek leavened flatbread called lagana, but it is not clear when the name was first applied to a leavened bread.
  
  