Genzano di Roma: The Pope's Bread
Discovering Rome surroundings
and their traditionally-made breads
By Luciana Squadrilli
Rome is Italy’s world-known Capital,
the Eternal City where princes, artists and Popes have lived; every year
millions of people come to visit its ancient ruins, as well as its
contemporary museums and its astonishingly beautiful settings such as the
Spanish Steps or the Gianicolo hill.
Not everybody knows, however, that very
close to the central town, the so-called Castelli Romani (“Roman Castles”)
Area offers wonderful landscapes and gastronomic traditions that really make
it worth to visit.
Beautiful lakes crowded with Romans
families in the warm season and weekends, but very quiet during weekdays;
enchanting nobles’ houses with their incredible gardens and fountains; huge
vineyards that still produce the wine that was drunk in the ancient
“osterie” in Rome, as well as some very interesting new Italian wines; the
popular “fraschette”, very cheap places where you can buy and eat the local
wine and products such as cheese ( “pecorino romano”) and hams (don’t miss
the wonderful “porchetta”, a spiced roasted pork).
But the main culinary tradition of
these area is related to one of the most common but important products, yet
not so much renowned as it should be: the bread.
In this area, actually, there are some
of the few towns in Italy where you can still find the original oven baked
bread made with ancient recipes different from place to place.
Lariano, with its mixed-flour rustic
bread, is the farthest, further away the Regional Park of the Castelli
Romani, while Genzano, home of the unique crispy bread (known by the same
name), is set on the slopes of the volcanic crater where the Nemi Lake
originated.
If you go there during the second week
end of September for the Bread’s Fair, you’ll find the whole town invaded by
the bread’s smell and by the barbeques where they prepare the “bruschetta”
(roasted bread seasoned with garlic, salt and olive oil).
Every day though, Genzano is pervaded
by the smell of the chestnut wood, burning in the few original ovens still
in function ( now joint together in a Protection Union to preserve the
product’s ancient tradition).
Things still happen the same way they
used to in the XVII century, when Prince Cesarini Sforza (whose palace was
the town’s first building) gave this bread as an offer to the Pope who
greatly enjoyed it.
In the XIX Century Genzano’s bread had
a relevant role in the commoners’ rebellion against the wheat’s rationing .
Sure, times have changed since then,
and now just few families still make their bread at home but it still
happened until the end of the Second World War. Back then, women prepared
the bread loafs putting a sign (a bean, a wood, a potato that was later
eaten with some olive oil and salt, as nothing could be wasted...) to
recognize their own from the others in the same batch. Afterwards they took
it to the so called “socce” ovens, where others women baked them to
perfection, as men where far and away.
But which is the secret ingredient to
make such a tasty, crispy and appealing bread?
When listening to Sergio Bocchini , one
of the few wood-oven bakeries’ owner, called Fischiò by everybody here,
while watching him talking about “his” bread and his life – hard to
separate the two items – no doubt is left: it’s passion.
The same passion that, during the
Second World War’s hard times urged his father, Eligio, to carry the bread
sacks over his shoulders and take this incredible, golden crusted bread to
the Capital City, where it soon became one of the Romans’ most wanted.
A passion that sometimes has been a
burden for Sergio, and that he unsuccessfully tried to escape, since when,
on his 18th birthday, his father compelled him to work with him and leave
his friends, the happy nights out and the lazy Sundays.
Nowadays, he is one of the Union’s
promoters and most active members. This Union puts together 13 traditional
bakeries in the Genzano municipality, where they make this unique, savoury
and scented bread.
Thankfully today even a baker’s life
is a little less bitter. Modern life’s rhythms have set their rules. You
can’t escape the time due to “loisir” (and consumption), so the working
shifts and baking days have been reduced , leaving Sundays and Holydays
free.
The dough-mixers will do the hard job,
and electric ovens have made their way beside the wood ones.
But there’s something that never
changes, Sergio assures us: the flavour of this ancient yet very plain
bread, whose secret is, apart from the old traditional art given from father
to son, in the raw materials. These have also been fixed in the DOP
Regulation paper, obtained in the 1992, to preserve the original recipe.
Type 0 Flour, that guarantees the
bread’s softness and the soft part beautiful hazelnut colour; water, for
the 70%, that naturally evaporates during the bread’s yeasting and cooking
so that it will keep his freshness for even 10 days.
The double yeasting is based on the
dough remaining from the day before, and left all night long to “make the
guard”, that is to say to leaven and rise.
And, most of all, the cruschello, the
wheat’s skin, rich in fibres and flavour. Usually it’s thrown away but the
here they use it instead of flour to dust the loafs before baking them.
What you get is a savoury and soft
crumb bread, with a crispy and inviting golden crust.
With a slice of Italian “mortadella” (a
special kind of salami) or of the local “porchetta”, this bread is a
temptation very hard to resist.
As days go by, the soft part becomes
dense, the crust gets softer, the wheat‘s smell deeper, but the bread in
not less good at all. On the contrary, you can use it to prepare some of the
simple but tasty traditional recipes, such as the pan cotto ( a garlic,
oil, tomato and old bread soup).
After all, not so long ago, bakeries
always had to store some bread from the day before, as the wise women knew
that if they had taken home the fresh one, everyone would have tasted it,
and it wouldn’t have been there anymore before diner…
These days, we suggest you to go visit
this beautiful countryside so close to Rome, and to stop by Genzano, to try
this bread just taken from the oven: so you’ll indulge yourself with the
simple and ancient privilege to discover a flavour that for hundreds of
years, has given joy to countrymen as well as to Popes.
You can taste the real Genzano’s bread
at the Forno Da Sergio, Via Italo Belardi 11, Genzano, Rome. Tel.
+39-06-9396113. Closed on Sundays and on Thursday in the afternoon. If not
too busy, Sergio will tell you everything about Genzano and its
bread-related history.
Contact:
luciana.squadrilli@katamail.com
List on Special Interest page under
heading of Global Food
Rome italy
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