Having made Pane Genzano and having found it to be a very interesting bread, I really wanted to experience the real thing on my recent trip to Italy with my wife. We had our hotel arrange a driver for us and rode went about twenty miles south from Rome to the town of Genzano. Since Pane Genzano pops up occasionally on this forum, it seemed appropriate to share my experiences.

We planned our destination to be Forno a Legna da Sergio, one of the bakeries featured in Dan Leader's book "Local Breads" in the section on Pane Genzano. For those not familiar with Pane Genzano, it is a huge, eight-pound sourdough loaf made from very wet (about 74% hydration) dough, coated with bran to solve sticking and baked very dark that has been made the same way in a wood burning ovens for many years. It is the only bread in Italy to have IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) status. There are about a dozen bakeries in Genzano that make Pane Genzano and each has a devoted following. More on that later.

Here I am in my red Forno Bravo T-shirt and Sergio (the silver haired gentleman across the counter) in his shop.

Here is the bread rack with the Pane Genzano in the upper right.

A close up of the loaf and the label.

And a close up of our light dinner to show the crumb!

After visiting the bakery took our driver to lunch at Trattoria dei Cacciatore (http://www.trattoria-cacciatori.com/). The food was outstanding - some of the best we had in Italy - and the house wine was excellent. A great deal! The bread served was clearly not Sergio's but in absence of good communcation ability I asked "Es Pane Genzano, No?" and the owner said "Si, es Pane Genzano!" So then I said, "Pane de Sergio?" and he said, "NO, NO, NO! Es impossible! No, Sergio! Must be Antichi!" This was, of course, accompanied by a generous acccompniment of arm waving and gesturing. And was what I had sort of expected! After lunch we wandered down the street to the Antichi bakery but alas, it was closed for lunch!

All in all we had a great adventure and a great day. Be warned, drivers are expensive. Ours cost about $200 and his English was pretty marginal. The end result was easily the most expensive bread I have ever bought.  And I was able to verify that my Pane Genzano - based on Leader's recipe - is a good representation of the original!  If you haven't tried Pane Genzano from Leader's book I highly recommend it! (It makes only about a 3 1/2 pound loaf instead of 8!)

One last aside! Genzano loaves are famous for their keeping abilities. We bought the loaf on a Monday morning and were to begin a week long cooking school on Saturday. We kept the loaf whole for three days. (Like many large loaves, the flavor is thought to improve for at least two days so this was planned.) Then we cut of just a bit for our light dinner and saved the rest for our cooking school companions as I was confident no one (even the instructor) would have had Pane Genzano before. Well, the bread made great bruschetta on Saturday and Sunday. And panzanella on Monday. And when the bag of bread got left behind on Wednesday, we used it for crostini. And finished it off as bread crumbs in stuffing ravioli. The giant loaf was extremely useful! And delicious!

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you some recent bakes.  Enjoy!  Sorry no recipes.  Please bug me if you want any of them.

Tim

4/2/10 - Pane Casereccio di Genzano, Poilane style miche, Olive Bread.  The olive bread did not turn out well...  Sorry no crumbshots for these.

4/4/10 - Cottage Loaves

4/6/10 - Pane di Matera (Durum bread).  This is my poor attempt at this bread.  It's really difficult to shape.  Mine looked horrible, but they tasted pretty good...  More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng4jnGnLTb4 and here: http://mollicadipane.blogspot.com/2008/12/il-pane-di-matera_7869.html

4/7/10 - Breadcrumb Bread...  This is another attempt at doing the Pane di Matera shape, very slightly more successfully, but not quite there yet...

4/8/10 - Olive Bread...  Sorry no crumbshot...  My friends said it tasted really good...

4/11/10 - Pizza.  Mushroom, and Artichoke, and Jamon Serrano...

I had a big baking day yesterday, with a couple pugliese loaves from BBA using mostly durum flour (made a fine breakfast with butter and honey this morning), the largest ciabatta I've ever made, and Dan Leader's Genzano Potato Pizza from Local Breads to come with me to a potluck.

I also thought I should introduce myself, since I haven't really posted much before. I live in Pennsylvania via Kentucky. I bake for fun, therapy, health, and the downright delicious results. I've cooked my whole life and started baking bread regularly about two years ago. I also make beer, cider, yogurt, and have tinkered with cheese, so am interested in all things fermentable.

The potato pizza formula is the same as for Genzano Country Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4417/genzano-country-bread-local-breads), but after fermentation it is coaxed into an oiled sheet pan and topped with lots of very thin potatoes, onions (red for me), fresh rosemary, and a bit of coarse salt.  It was a lot of fun working the enormous mass of wet dough into the pan.  I actually made Genzano Country Bread a few days ago, and trying to shape this wet beast of a dough into something like a boule and getting it safely into a proofing basket had me laughing like a crazy man.   

I used all KA organic bread flour.  Daniel recommends high-gluten, but I've found that Sir Lancelot is a lot stronger than I like unless I need to offset a lot of rye or similar.  The formula uses a biga naturale that I just made from my firm starter, and is spiked with instant yeast for a vigorous rise.  In the future I'd like to omit the instant yeast and give it a whirl with wild yeast alone.  The dough is pretty sloppy, and needed high speed mixing for about 12 minutes to come together suitably.  After about a 3 hour ferment, it was shaped, topped, and baked immediately at 500 for a shade over 30 minutes.  Sorry I don't have pictures of the whole thing, I cut it in half before removing it from the pan, but hopefully you can get the idea.  I called this one successful, the crust was crisp and delicious and the crumb was ideal.  I've never liked potato pizzas I've ordered out because the potatoes tend to come WAY undercooked, but these were much nicer because of the bake time, and some of those on the top were browned and crisp.  My only addition to this in the future would be garlic, and lots of it.

Logan