Pane di Casa: Baking Sicilian Homemade Bread

There's a moment, driving out of the city and into the hills between Palazzolo Acreide and Ferla, when everything relaxes. The valleys dip down as the hills rise up to meet the open sky. The cars start to disappear, the road narrows and starts to curve and climb, and somewhere along the way the air changes. Less exhaust, more dry grass and wild herbs, and you remember why everyone who can leaves town in August. Old friends pile into cars and take the windy roads. Kids pour out and immediately run toward whatever there is to climb or chase: kittens, a puppy, a tricycle, a mini electronic Fiat. In a few miles, life gets simple fast. This is where I learned about pane di casa, or a some in the campagna still call it, pani ri casa (the bread of the house).

The Smell Before the Bread

Before the bread, there's the smell of the place where it comes from. Dry grass gone gold and brittle underfoot. Other greenery pushing up from the recent rains. Wild fennel and thyme releasing their oil into the heat, sharp and green against the dust. Somewhere nearby, a fig tree drops fruit that splits open in the sun, syrupy and fermenting slightly. That sweet smell of sugar just starting to turn is as much a part of a Sicilian summer as anything baked or eaten. Stone walls, warmed all day, exhale their own mineral heat well after dusk. Since Etna had been erupting that week, fine, gritty, black volcanic ash dusted everything.

And then, sharply, cutting through all of it: woodsmoke. The forno a legna (the outdoor wood oven), which is either a separate structure or even a little grill on the side of the house, the set up could be centuries old, being fed with almond wood or olive prunings, whatever's been picked up or saved through the year for this purpose. Today, giant, bushy branches of an herb what looked like oregano, and fine, dried branches of a dead bush. This aromatic smoke fills the air. It gets into your clothes, your hair, the hunks of bread on the table. And it's the smell of bread about to happen!

The Dough

Pane di casa is a lean dough — flour (often the local durum, semola rimacinata, which gives Sicilian bread its pale gold color and dense, slightly sweet crumb), water, salt and a piece of yesterday's dough or a bit of lievito madre kept alive in a cloth-covered bowl, fed and kept alive. Some households still use a criscente (a natural starter passed down, often for generations), it's not unusual to hear someone say their starter is older than they are.

The kneading is done by hand, on a wide wooden board or directly on the marble counter if the kitchen has one, with the rhythm and zero hesitation. The dough gets shaped into round loaves, or sometimes into the twisted, braided mafalda shape studded with sesame seeds, and set to rise under a cloth, in whatever shade can be found, because in August the kitchen itself is often hotter than outside.

Feeding the Oven

Getting the forno ready is its own ritual, and it happens hours before the bread does. A fire is built inside the domed oven itself and left to burn down, blackening the stone, until the whole structure has soaked up the heat like a battery. The ash and embers are raked out with a long-handled tool, the floor wiped clean with a wet cloth tied to a stick--you can hear the hiss of it, see the puff of steam. Only then does the bread go in, often on a long wooden peel. 

The smell changes again here: from woodsmoke to something toastier, the specific perfume of crust forming, of flour caramelizing against scorching stone.

What It's For

This type of bread is amazing when eaten fresh, but it's built to last the week. It's dense enough to survive days in a cloth-lined madia, the wooden bread box, going from soft to slightly leathery to, eventually, the foundation of pane cunzatu or bruschetta rubbed with tomato and oregano pulled straight off the plant. Stale pane di casa becomes breadcrumbs for pasta con le sarde, a chicken cutlet, or gets torn into soups, or soaked and dressed as a simple panzanella when the tomatoes are abundant and sweet, around July to August every year.

If you've stood in one of these kitchens or courtyards, looking out over the hills of the campagna, and held a fresh loaf of pane di casa, you know that magic feeling. Breaking it open and feeling the hot puff of bread air, then covering it in homemade olive oil and oregano is heaven. 

More recipes from the campagna to come. 

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