Of all the shops and restaurants in Matera, my favorite is the Casa del Pane, the paneficio (bakery) in the piazza Vittorio Veneto, the heart of Matera. There is bread, of course, but the shelves are also laden with packages of biscotti. (But when I say biscotti, I don’t just mean those banal crescents sold by Starbucks. In Italian, biscotti is the generic term for “cookies.” I mean strazzate, bittersweet with the elusive taste of almonds, chewy and soft or crunchy with a glazed crust. I mean moretti, which are like little pancakes, dense and chocolaty. I mean friselli, which would make a Starbucks patron feel more at home with their crescent shape and chocolate chips. And the taralli, a Materan specialty that by American standards don’t even count as cookies, salty as they are. I will tell you some other time about these crunchy, addictive 0’s.)
Walking into the shop is like being hugged. You find yourself nestled between, on the left, shelves thronged with biscotti and on the right, a glass counter that wraps around the shop, high as my shoulder and filled with dolci and salati. Behind the counter, shelves line the wall to the ceiling. These shelves are stacked with bread, the famous pane di Matera, whole wheat bread, olive bread, bread crusted with cheese, bread flecked with herbs, bread braided and twisted into whorls. The warm air wraps around you as soon as you walk in. And the incredible thing about this paneficio is that the aromas are never the same, even if the merchandise does not change noticeably. Some days the air is heavy with yeast; some days the aromas are sweet; and some days just standing in that shop and breathing is like sipping soup, so warm and thick is the air with salt, tomatoes, oregano, and potatoes. Above the shelves floats a paper mâchè angel, a bundle of blue drapery and rosy dimples: this is a trophy removed from the float during the annual Festa della Bruna (more about this festival of Matera’s patron saint later). The legend goes that if you tear off a piece from the float carrying the saint’s effigy you will have good luck for the rest of your life.
Although I have been a regular at this paneficio for almost five months, I have hardly begun to sample its delights—though the strazzate I can answer for; the pane di Matera is as perfect as any loaf of bread that you will find in Matera; and as for my favorite focaccia, the one that glistens ever so slightly with olive oil, flecked with oregano, and encrusted with tomatoes-- well: let me just say that there are few better things in life than leaving school, ravenous, at three o’clock, and biting into a warm, doughy piece of focaccia. Two weeks ago, though, I ate a pastry that had intrigued me for some time. Six inches long and thick as best-seller, the studente is basically a log of chocolate sheathed in a butter crust. The chocolate filling is dense, crumbly, and slightly bitter, rather like a brownie that doesn’t want to ingratiate itself too much with its public.
Delicious as the studente is, I found myself making this invidious comparison with the brownie. Maybe I’ve been away from home too long. Maybe I haven’t had enough chocolate lately. But this weekend I decided, what the heck, I’m going to make brownies.
I have a long and troubled history with the brownie. I blame the fact that in my home brownies were made with the No Pudge Brownie mix from Trader Joes, in deference to my mother’s austere diet. When I began baking, I did not have any models to follow. My brownies were always too cake-like, too bitter, too blonde, too vanilla-y, always too too and never enough. The fact of the matter is, until yesterday I had never managed to make an acceptable brownie.
Yesterday morning I did my homework on Epicurius.com. I perused the ratings, analyzed the reviews, calculated the ratios between the number of reviews per recipe and the number of people who would try the recipe again. At 5:10 yesterday afternoon I put the tray of brownies in the oven. The recipe said that they should be left to bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick, inserted in the middle, came out trailing crumbs. The recipe didn’t know what a lame oven I have. At 5:30 I began to check my brownies. Still gooey, though with a top that was alarmingly close to done. For the next two hours I did battle with the oven, wrapping my brownies in ever-increasing strati of aluminum foil, adjusting the rack to different levels, flipping the pan over so that the heat could reach the insides (I found out—I had never checked before—that the oven’s one source of heat is located on the top. Really useful.) I flipped those brownies more times than a pizza maker flips the dough. At 8:00 precisely I commended my soul and culinary reputation to the kitchen gods and pulled the brownies out of the oven, because I wasn’t about to be late for dinner.
I think that, for once in my life, my brownies passed muster. One of my friends was so enthusiastic about them that he made me bring them to the paneficio to “blow his mind away.” The brownie really is a revelation to Italians daring enough to try them. It’s unabashedly decadent-- no masking of the chocolate with olive oil or ambiguous flavors like almonds or amarena. A brownie just is. Chocolate.
We gave a piece to the baker. At first he wanted to take a side piece, but we insisted that he take a middle piece, which as you know, is pure chewiness and no rind. Then he said that he would eat his pezzetino after lunch. No, no, said my friend, eat it now while it’s fresh. The baker took a cautious bite. He didn’t say anything. His expression didn’t change—though maybe he blinked. But then he looked at me and said, “If you don’t manage to find another job as an English teacher, you can always come here and put on an apron.”
My friend turned to a signore who was watching the proceedings with interest. Did he want to try? Also this signore ate his brownie reflectively, then began to discuss it in detail with the baker. It was delicious, they said, but then, Americans are good at making sweets. This dolce was rich, it had a robustness that was proprio buono. “Robustness” is one translation for what they said, but I would love to translate literally the word carnevolezza: a meatiness. Please, the next time that you are describing a brownie, don’t fall back on the over-used “chewy” and “gooey”: try “meaty.”
A highly gratifying weekend. Not only did I succeed in making a batch of brownies, but they were lauded by Materani, who take great pride in their cuisine. “Americans are good at making sweets!” That settles it: I am now determined to spread truth, justice, and the American brownie.
Epilogue
Operation Share the Brownie goes but slowly. I must contend with the composition of the Italian oven: the main heat source seems to be located at the top, which makes obtaining the balance between unburnt crust and chewy insides a harrowing process. A few weeks ago, though, I made brownies with one of my private students. A fellow foodie, she secured the family kitchen one evening after our lesson so that we might make this American sweet. The mother was very anxious that we have all of the right ingredients, though, typically, her attitude towards the measurement of these ingredients was rather more cavalier. We poured the batter into a large, shallow pan, which already made me nervous about the outcome. I was already nervous enough to forget to preheat the oven; so we had to wait for the oven to heat up as we did the washing up.
While we waited for the brownies, my student and I set to work preparing dinner. The mother had already made the dough for the focaccia; my student and I had the fun part of spreading the toppings (Just a sidenote: Considering how fundamental pizza and focaccia are to the Italian diet, it’s surprising that they don’t have an equivalent word for “topping.” Instead, you have to say “the ingredients that you put on top” or something similar.) But in-between pouring tomato sauce and drizzling olive oil, I fretted about those brownies.
As usual, after the prescribed cooking time (25 minutes), the brownies were still liquidy. Forty minutes passed. 50 minutes. My student’s father, back after a long day’s work, wandered into the kitchen and, gnawing a piece of bread, mentioned the fact that he had skipped lunch. I feared that not only I, but the brownies, were about to become non grata. After one hour the mother, my student, and I held a counsel of war and decided to retrieve the brownies. We peeled back the aluminum foil and inserted a toothpick. The recipe says to bake the brownies for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the pan comes out with crumbs attached. We scrutinized the toothpick and found one miniscule crumb. Those brownies were done. Mi sento come se fossi Cristoforo Colombo quando ha scoperto l’America, I joked (I feel as if I were Christopher Columbus when he discovered America).
In spite of that one crumb, the brownies were well over-done. They even verged on the tough. But my hostess gamely cut them into quadretti and served them with due ceremony after the focaccia. I begged the family not to think that these sad squares were brownies, but my hostess insisted that they were proprio buoni. Should I trust her? Even if she were just being polite, such was her politeness that she ate two pieces.
Since that experience, I have made more brownies and shared them with other Materani. For the most part, they seem bemused by the chocolateness of the brownie. But that is why I like the brownie so much; it’s frank, like Americans. Frank, unpretentious, but effective. Might I propose the brownie as the new hamburger?
