In spite of my aversion to baking cakes, I do love to bake fresh bread. We have a 60-year-old sourdough starter that is lovingly fed every day and when we moved into this place we both relinquished our bread making machines in favour of more traditional, rustic methods. We haven’t regretted it. Summer means lots of outdoors cooking and making of flat breads and now we have pane Carasau to add to our repertoire.
Located off the western coast of Italy, Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean. Sardinia’s an island that National Geographic has identified as a Blue Zone, meaning that it is one of those rare places in the world (along with Okinawa, Japan; Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California; and Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula) where people often live past the age of 100. It’s so common that islanders have an expression in the native dialect, Sardo: A Chent’Annos (“May you live to be 100”). Sardinia shares a number of factors that encourage this longevity with other Blue Zone communities: close family and community relationships, plenty of socialising, nearly constant moderate physical activity, and a largely plant-based diet.
The distinctive flavours of Sardinian cuisine are both Italian and a hybrid of influences, beginning with the Phoenicians and followed by Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Moors, and Spanish, amongst others. Sardinia was occupied by nearly every Mediterranean power for more than 2,500 years, until it became part of Italy in 1861. This layered culinary heritage is evident in a number of Sardinian foods, such as pasta. While a traditional pasta shape is labelled as coming from “the continent” (as many Sardinians call Italy), others like fregula (a pasta of Moorish origin that looks like Israelian couscous) and malloreddus (small, chewy dumplings) are unique to the island and not widely known outside Sardinia. Because of this repeated invasion by sea, the indigenous people escaped into the interior of the island and as a consequence, much of Sardinia’s most popular foods are land-based. In Sardinia, sheep supposedly outnumber people three to one.Every family grows something on their land and what one family doesn’t have, another provides, giving rise to a great sense of community where food is concerned. Fennel, asparagus, mushrooms, myrtle, and other foods still grow wild, and a chef is just as likely to cook with foraged ingredients as she/he is with cultivated produce. That sustainable, interdependent way of life was essential to survival and the key to residents’ longevity.
Pane carasau is a traditional flatbread from Sardinia. It is thin and crisp, and is made by taking baked flat bread (made of durum wheat flour, salt, yeast and water), then separating it into two sheets which are baked again. The recipe is an ancient one and was conceived for shepherds, who used to stay far from home for months at a time. Pane carasau can last up to a year if it is kept dry and can be eaten either dry or wet (with water, wine, or sauces). A similar, yeast-free bread is called carta di musica in Italiy (also known as pane guttiau in Sardinia), meaning music sheet, because of its large and paper-thin shape, which is so thin before cooking that a sheet of music can be read through it. Remains of the bread were found in archeological excavations of nuraghi (traditional Sardinian stone buildings) so it was therefore eaten on the island prior to 1000 BC.
Traditionally, pana carasau was made using a labor intensive process that required the work of three women. After having prepared the dough, it had to be rolled out into very thin sheets that were baked in a very hot oven (840°-930°F) until it puffed up like a ball. Even today, these disks of bread have to be removed from the oven, and with great skill, cut along their circumference and divided into sheets. The sheets are then stacked one on top of another with the porous side facing out. The bread is then baked again to make it crispy and give it its characteristic colour, or carasatura. In the past, when it was prepared for the shepherds, the bread was folded in half during cooking, when the bread was still flexible, to reduce its size and allow it to fit in a rucksack.
Recipe
Ingredients
500g of durum wheat flour
250ml of water
A sachet of fast acting yeast
A pinch of sea salt
Method
Add the durum wheat flour, water, yeast and a pinch of salt to a large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly to make an elastic dough. Once this is done, divide the dough into four parts and leave it to rest for a good hour. The next job is very fiddly, you need to roll the dough pieces out until they are incredibly thin and then place them in the oven for two minutes. As they cook, they will puff up. When this happens prick each one and cut to make two further breads. Finally, pop them back in the oven for a further minute and the result will be crispy delicious pane carasau, which you can either eat plain of with the toppings of your choice. It’s fabulous in lasagna or with homemade tomato sauce, capers and olives strewn on it.
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