Castelvetrano black bread
Acknowledgments: Slow Food Presidium
The shape is that of a round loaf, which in Sicilian is called vastedda, the crust is hard and coffee-colored (sprinkled with sesame seeds), the dough is soft and wheat yellow. Famous throughout Sicily, Castelvetrano bread has become increasingly rare over the years and has even risked disappearing due to its particularity of being cooked exclusively in wood ovens and being produced with Sicilian stone-ground grains.
Its color comes from the raw material. It is kneaded by mixing two flours, that of Sicilian durum wheat and that obtained from an ancient population of local wheat, the timilìa, both wholemeal and milled with natural stone mills. And it is thanks to the very rare timila that Castelvetrano bread becomes black and extraordinarily sweet and tasty, with intense aromas and a particular toasted aroma. The other ingredients are water, salt and natural yeast (lu criscenti, the mother). Before cooking the dough must rise for a long time.
Each baker has an old well-ventilated warehouse where the pruning of the olive trees can be dried. The fronds are used to feed the stone ovens. The fire - lively and brilliant - makes the walls red-hot and the temperature, at the highest point, reaches 300 ° C. With the flames out, the oven is carefully cleaned with a dwarf palm broom (curina) with a very long handle and the bread is baked, which cooks slowly and without direct fire as the temperature decreases. When the oven has cooled down, the bread is baked.
Fresh, it has very clear toasted notes on the nose, almost of malt and toasted almond, which combine with the light aromatic scent of olive wood over which it is cooked.
Tradition has it that the freshly baked and still hot black bread of Castelvetrano is divided in two and tanned with extra virgin olive oil (preferably from the local Nocellara del Belìce), salt, oregano, sliced tomato, typical cheese of the area (primosale or Vastedda) , boned anchovies or sardines and basil. An extraordinary breakfast or meal.
Source: (Slow Food Foundation)
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Card insertion: Ignazio Caloggero
Information contributions: Web, Region of Sicily
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