In this installment
Paesano Bread
Roi Olive Oil
Paesano Bread
This bread hails from Puglia, the heel of the boot of Italy. The name itself translates to “villager” or “countryman.” It’s a rustic peasant bread we make with nothing but organic wheat flour, water, sea salt, and yeast, along with an organic cornmeal-dusted crust.
This is what bakers call a high-hydration bread, at 72% water. The high water content and long fermentation process result in a bread with large air pockets of varying sizes. We love them; they aren’t a mistake! During a trip to our stone hearth oven, all that moisture inside escapes and results in a tender, airy crumb and a thin, chewy crust. This bread has a sweet and buttery flavor even though there’s no sugar or butter in the dough. Paesano is perfect for passing around the table to rip and dip in olive oil, pasta sauce, or soup. Try toasting slices brushed with olive oil on the grill and then rubbing them with whole garlic cloves. We guarantee it’ll be the star of the meal and no one will have to know how easy it is.
Roi Olive Oil
On the Italian Riviera, delicacy, not strength, brings an oil acclaim and honor.
Roi is one of the best Ligurian extra virgin olive oils I’ve tried. It’s been made in the mountain town of Badalucco, perched on steep slopes between the Mediterranean and the mountains. (If you saw the sweeping vistas of the steeply sloped olive groves featured in the opening of the Fat episode of the Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Heat—those were the Roi groves.) The Boeri family has been making oil here since 1900, exclusively from the thumbnail-sized Taggiasca olive. Taggiascas thrive in the challenging conditions, where there’s only a thin layer of soil above the rocky mountainside. The trees do so well, in fact, that the Roi groves include trees that are more than 200 years old. As Franco Boeri puts it, “Taggiasca is only a small part of all Italian olive oil. But since it’s very sweet, very delicate, it’s somewhat considered like Champagne among wines.”
This oil is the favorite of many of our crew. I regularly recommend it to folks who are beginning their olive oil education. At home, I love to pour Roi on freshly baked whole fish (half an hour at 350 degrees for a fish that weighs a pound).