![]() ![]() (These days, the bread itself is generally called tigelle, which is a little like calling potato chips a fryer, but the name stuck.) When the tigelle were ready, the family took the bread out of the molds, split them in half, and slathered on a kind of pesto made from lardo, rosemary, garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano, according to Mastro Tigella, an Italian website devoted to all things tigelle.Īccording to a historic account on tigelle mold manufacturer Balestri’s website, the family would stand around the fire and wait for the bread to cook, and were able to “forget for awhile the problems and fatigue of the hard life of those times.”Įventually, the clay tigelle molds gave way to more modern iron and aluminum presses with long handles called tigelliere that could make four or more tigelle at a time. The molds were already heated in the coals of the day’s fire, and when stacked on top of one another into a tower shape, didn’t take long to bake. ![]() They packed balls of dough called crescentine in tigelle, or disc-shaped clay molds, made from earth dug deep under their chestnut trees. For ages, deep in the Apennine Mountains near Modena, home of the famous Balsamic vinegar and site of a 2012 earthquake, farming families gathered around the hearth to bake the evening bread. While it sounds decadent, the bread has its roots in poverty. Or, you can just wolf them down, plain and yeasty and hot. Tigelle are shaped like disks, slightly browned (thanks, Maillard!) crisp on the outside, and soft and steamy on the inside, ready for the spread of your choice. Think of them as the lovechildren of an English muffin and a pancake. had any idea what he was talking about.īefore we talk about the trip, let’s talk about what makes tigelle so appealing. That’s because he was looking for a way to recreate a traditional peasant bread from Modena he found on the Internet called tigelle (tih-GEL-ay.) And at the time, very few people in the U.S. “I was told: ‘It’s impossible,’” recalls chef Nathan Anda, the brains and the brawn behind Red Apron Butcher and The Partisan in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C. When an American chef went searching for a special bread that would stand up to his meat-centric menu, he didn’t know it would take him four years and include schlepping heavy iron molds in his suitcase across Italy. ![]()
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