The coppietta veneta
Good morning, friends of Erre4m, and welcome to this new post. Today we begin a short journey that will take us to talk about a few types of bread, in which our region — the Veneto — is truly rich.
The first bread I want to bring to your attention is the one that, for the people of the Veneto, is the piece of bread par excellence: LA CIOPA.
In our region the term ciòpa is generally used to mean the unit of measure for a piece of bread, as we shall see later on.
But what does the word ciopa mean? To answer this question I have to call on the Venetian scholar Elio Zorzi, who discusses it in his volume Osterie veneziane (Venetian Taverns), identifying and defining the ciopa in this way… I quote: the bine, a type of bread very common in antiquity in the capital of the Serenissima, were made up of four piccie (Treccani: piccia = a pair of objects joined together, mostly lengthwise) of wheat bread, attached to one another along their sides; from the splitting of the bine into two distinct pieces the ciope were born, a word derived by metathesis from coppia (pair), denoting a pair of bread piccie, which in turn evolved in form until they became today's ciopa, the most characteristic bread of Venice.
And inevitably the figure of Venice constantly frames the development (in every field) of post-Roman Veneto. After its foundation and swift rise, Venice established itself as a crossroads of (highly profitable) trade between East and West, and against this backdrop cross-fertilisation, ideas, creativity, refinement, luxury and competition all flourished.
Venice was full of workshops of Pistori (the bakers who kneaded and leavened the bread dough) and of Forneri (the bakers who baked the bread). Yes, because as early as the Middle Ages the world of Venetian bread-makers was split into pistori and forneri. What is quite interesting is that, over time, the school of the Pistori also came to include professionals from other parts of Italy and Europe (Lombards/Piedmontese, Germans, Slavs, Albanians, and so on), and so the types and shapes of bread naturally multiplied enormously.
And the same is true for our beloved Ciopa. The shape of the Ciopa — the fruit of artisan creativity — is the most varied of all, in keeping with local traditions established over centuries. And so in the Padua area ciopa means the corno padovano, whereas in Vicenza the ciopa is a double filocino, twisted and paired; in the Treviso area the ciopa also takes the shape of foglie, of giraffe, of montasù. In short, from one Veneto town to the next, you find a different ciopa every time.
The weight of the ciopa can vary accordingly. It ranges from the 50 grams of the ciopete or cioppette up to the 400 grams of the cioppe proper; but what does not change across the various forms of the ciope is the type of dough. The ciopa is a dough made with soft wheat flour, water, salt, sourdough and baker's yeast.
The dough is always firm, so much so that once baking is complete the crumb turns out compact, the crust tends to be pale, thick and crisp, and it lends itself very well to being cut into slices.
Some devotees of the Veneto bread tradition, however, will surely be grumbling, because so far I have left out the shape most people know (especially those of certain, no-longer-so-young generations). Again it is Elio Zorzi who points out that: the term ciopa refers above all to round-shaped loaves and, very modestly, I would add that they usually also have a fine, large cross scored on the surface… just so as not to forget the religious culture that accompanied people's daily lives and that, incidentally, works very well to boost the rising of the loaf during baking.
As I said earlier, the firm dough that makes up the ciopa (the 400-gram one) was crucial in the old days for obtaining a bread that could keep — so my sources tell me — for a whole week. Some even tell me it was put in a cloth sack and hung up high, out of reach of children's hands and rodents. Some would slice it and toast it in the wood-fired oven so that it could go with the soups that were almost a daily fixture on peasant tables.
And now the quantities for the ciopa… one of many recipes — I certainly claim no exclusive rights to it!
800g old or soured dough (that is, pasta di riporto)
500g fine wheat flour (fior di frumento, tending to be weak, since the flours used in the old days were weak)
225g water
20g baker's yeast
20g salt
The ingredients were mixed together in the kneading trough and then worked with the gramola (a dough brake), given the dry consistency of the dough.
Divided into pieces of 500 g and rolled up nice and tight, laid out on wooden boards and covered once again for the final rising, which lasted about an hour.
Once that time had passed, it was scored with a cross on the surface and put into the wood-fired oven for a bake that was never excessive, keeping it on the pale side.
My memory of ciopa is tied to breakfast time. Early in the morning, especially in summer. My grandfather would arrive with his basket full of ciope from the wood-fired oven, still warm and crackling, almost white, with a good firm, crisp crust and the most fragrant crumb… the caffellatte was already waiting, because eating them like that was, for me, sheer heaven… and what is your memory?
See you next time, and HAPPY BAKING TO ALL!
Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer.
