BREAD TO BRING TEARS

I have to level the playing field. After my last post in praise of French bread, I feel I should tell you a little bit about the bread of southern Italy – in particular, pane di Lentini from Sicily.
Last May I was brought to Lentini, a small village in the hills between Catania and Siracusa in the east of the island. In a tiny, steamy side street, 24 international students of gastronomy experienced a collective taste epiphany. Even the most irritatingly talkative were silenced; those with the best manners licked the olive oil that ran down their forearms; while a Puerto Rican gastronome, herself an artisan baker, wept over this bread, the women that make it and the craft that allows them to produce it.
The bread of Lentini – a Slow Food Presidium – is baked in olive wood-fired ovens. It is a low-rising loaf, traditionally shaped like an ‘S’ with a crusty, chewy exterior and a delicate interior that resembles a Victoria sponge. The texture is a little denser however, while the aroma, rich with notes of olive oil and charred olive wood, provides a suitable precursor to a full, salty taste. Slow Food aims to protect the production of this bread, which is made in simple bakeries along Lentini’s narrow streets. Only Sicilian wheat flour is used in the recipe. Most of these bakeries are owned and operated by women who still use the same sourdough starter that their grandmothers used. In many cases, the starter is older than the bakeries themselves.
We were served the loaves straight from the oven. The baker halved each ‘S’ shape and poured Sicilian olive oil onto the warm bread. When each half was sufficiently saturated with oil, she sprinkled the surface with dried oregano, hot chilli flakes and sea salt.
No Michelin-starred restaurant could compete with the surroundings of that Sicilian village and the warm bread we ate there.

Katie Phelan, FOOD WRITER