The ancient tradition
Today we continue the journey that leads us to talk about some types of Veneto bread and, inevitably, about the history of breadmaking.
Hello Friends of Erre4m, and welcome to this new post. Today we continue the journey that leads us to talk about some types of Veneto bread and, inevitably, about the history of breadmaking.
In the past, until roughly the middle of the twentieth century, it was customary to prepare bread dough at home. Our families, who were for the most part farmers, would take their wheat to the mill after the harvest (there was one in practically every village) to turn it into flour and other milled products (bran). The raw material for making bread was therefore reserved for the fortunate few who could farm a little land. Making bread — together with polenta here in the Veneto — was quite normal in the homes of our ancestors. Once it had been prepared and left to rise, it was customary to take it to the baker to be baked, since this stage of the process (the baking itself) was rather hard to carry out in farmhouses, where the cooking temperature and an even heat were by no means guaranteed with the ovens of those days.
As I said, home baking of bread was widespread throughout the Veneto, and it is very interesting to know that there were regulations issued by the central and local authorities in charge of ensuring, as far as possible, a wholesome product; today the matter seems almost laughable, but in times past it was anything but a given, considering the very poor hygiene in many cases.
These official notices for the home production of bread were followed all over the Veneto countryside, with few variations from one area to another. A document from the 1800s called The Venetian Bread tells us that: “starting from the premise that not all families make bread at home, they make it good all the same — tasty and wholesome — and that this depends on the handling, on the right proportion of leaven, on the degree of heat of the oven and on other circumstances”.
That document sets down, like a set of commandments, thirty-five precepts to follow in order to make a good loaf of home-made bread. The first ones concern the choice of suitable wheat, and it says: “spare no expense: choose old wheat, which yields more flour than new wheat, though the latter is tastier; try never to mix it with rye, and avoid adding too much bran, because that does not make a bread that nourishes — it stays damp and quickly goes mouldy. The wheat must be well milled, that is, a well-milled sack of wheat should fill one and a quarter sacks of flour. The best flour should be a month old; it must not be kept near the stables nor near places with a bad smell. The sacks must be laid on boards, never left on the ground, and turned often to expose both sides to the air”. It is very interesting to note that, more than two hundred years ago, the basic rules on milled products and their storage are still perfectly relevant today… stables aside!
These recommendations then turn to the classic piece of furniture in which bread was kneaded, namely the madia, and state: “whose wood must be neither ash nor pine”.
It also speaks of recipes, where: “15 pounds (1 pound equals 453 grams) of good flour, well cleaned and free of bran, will take from 7 to 8 pounds of water. As for the leaven, care must be taken that it is not old, which would give the bread a sour taste, and it must be refreshed every day by adding a little water and flour”.
Moving on to the method, it says: “pour onto the madia the water filtered through a cloth, so that it is well purified, at a lukewarm temperature — especially if the flour is rye — but never boiling, not even in winter. If the water is cold, in summer the bread turns out better, but it is harder work to knead”.
And so we come to the final part of the precepts: “granted that nothing good can be made without effort, we move on to teaching how the kneading is done: you must spread your two open hands side by side, thrust them into the dough to grip it in your fist, lift it, fold it over on itself, stretch it out, pulling it and dropping it quickly and firmly. If the madia is not scraped well, you will find pieces of unleavened dough in the bread”. This advice, which seems obvious — no less than the next — says: “when the dough is made and set to rise under blankets, make sure they are clean, otherwise they would give the bread a bad smell and may prevent the dough from rising. The bread should then be placed on old boards from furniture, which, however, must not have been painted, because they are dangerous when heated in the oven: if the colour is green it gives the bread a poor quality, almost as if it were poison”. Astonishing, and food for thought!
To conclude, it turns to baking. The document says: “the loaves are now put in the oven; if they are too large, they take shape and bake badly. Well-baked bread is noisy when pressed with a finger and, if you press it with your thumb, the part springs back up. Let the bread cool before eating it, not only so that it keeps longer, but also because eating it piping hot can be bad for you”.
These were the recommendations given to housewives in the 1800s, and the interesting thing is that this home breadmaking technique lasted right up until past the middle of the twentieth century, as long as there existed in the Veneto countryside the patriarchal families in which bread was made once a week and stayed good until the next baking. Generally the technique used relied, as we have seen, on sourdough starter, or on the sour old dough carried over from the previous batch, which allowed the bread to keep for a week.
Baker's yeast, already in use since the seventeenth century, was employed more by the public bakeries than by farming families, because it was far easier to use than sourdough starter, though of course it came at a different cost. The use of sourdough starter or sour dough by farming families, refreshed daily, produced a bread that kept longer, fragrant and tasty — a practice that fell out of use, however, with the disappearance of the patriarchal families. The bakers, therefore, had almost consigned sourdough starter to oblivion, using it only for a few particular products and reserving baker's yeast for soft doughs and for luxury baking.
We have understood that bread-making was both public and private. The former was the business of the bread industry and trade for profit; the latter was dictated by notions of household economy. The production of public bread was — then as now — subject to the observance of special laws and provisions of the State of the Serenissima and of the Municipality, concerning hygiene, safety, the well-being of the worker and the guarantee owed to the buying public.
Private breadmaking, on the other hand, lived in a state of complete independence and freedom, beyond any real oversight, and made do with means that were very often limited and inadequate compared with those of the bakeries, with narrow and deficient knowledge, and with methods that were most often empirical.
Until the middle of the twentieth century — that is, until well after the Second World War — very little changed in the way the people of the Veneto lived; then, in the years immediately following the second global catastrophe, once the reconstruction of the country was under way, peasant civilisation dissolved in the countryside with the end of sharecropping and the swift arrival of industrial civilisation. New bakeries sprang up in the countryside, and those already there were expanded to meet the growing demands of the inhabitants. With the economic boom of the 1960s, technology developed and was greatly refined; new industries arose to produce ovens, dough mixers and various pieces of equipment more modern than before. And so the bakeries too, adopting the new production techniques and the new equipment, entered a new era, making the types of bread far more uniform. Amid this social, economic and cultural upheaval, the knowledge and practice of home-made bread fell into immediate and total oblivion for at least fifty years or so.
A revival of this age-old tradition of making bread at home is re-emerging in the last years of the twentieth century and in these first decades of the new one. Almost everywhere we are witnessing a happy renewal of this tradition, thanks to a growing culture among enthusiasts, a better and more careful selection of consumer-grade flours, the return of sourdough starter alongside compressed yeast, and the fact that many professional pieces of equipment — of which Erre4m is absolute proof — have now been cleared for home use too.
It is rather lovely to think that when we make bread at home we are reconnecting with age-old practices and traditions… and now, the old recipe!
MONTASÙ
400g biga
250g type 0 flour
115g water
35g lard
10g baker's yeast
10g salt
The ingredients were mixed and kneaded together in the madia until they reached a smooth consistency.
Once kneaded, the dough was left to rise covered with a cloth for about thirty minutes, divided into pieces of 50–100 g depending on local tradition and rolled twice into a small baton. Two rolled pieces were then arranged one crossed over the other. Placed on wooden boards and covered once more for the final rise, which lasted about 45–50 minutes.
Once the rising was over, the montasù were put into the wood-fired oven to bake, a baking that tended to keep the crust pale and golden.
Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer.
