Making Bread, Calabrian style!
Bread is sacred in Calabria and it was always homemade. Most families baked their own bread at home in wood-burning ovens.
Families were also larger then so making tons of bread of all shapes and sizes was necessary in order to feed everyone and keep them satiated for several weeks at a time until repeating the all-day bread making process all over again. The wooden trough shown in this week’s video is called a mailla where we stay in the province of Reggio. These wooden troughs were often used to knead very large voluminous amounts of dough. Often requiring two (or more) people to knead at a time. The kneading process (which also includes using one’s fist very vigorously) can take over an hour to reach the proper consistency.
On the farm, during our Culinary Tour, we include a Calabrian bread making lesson where we start very early in the morning and prep and knead and bake throughout the day. We knead over 50 pounds of dough in a mailla and watch the farmhands prep the outdoor wood-burning oven filled with olive tree branches to infuse it with the proper aroma and temperature for baking all the bread. Finally, we enjoyed the fruits of our hard earned labor that same day al fresco on the farm alongside fresh tomatoes, pickled vegetables, cheeses, wine and cured meats. All grown and produced on the farm. It was absolutely magical.
Watch video highlights of the bread making workshop, 2019 Culinary Tour