TASTE OF TUSCANY Bland bread meets match

Who would think that stale, dry bread would contribute so much to a classic dish?
By MARIAN BETANCOURT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Tuscan bread is tasteless! In fact, centuries ago, that famous Florentine, Dante, author of "The Inferno," declared it so "insipid" that all other breads were "too salty."
Well, it should be insipid. This bread is the silent partner, a class act that never tries to compete with other flavors in Tuscan cuisine.
Now, 700 years after Dante, a Tuscan chef insists, "There must be no salt in the bread," as he demonstrates how to make pappa al pomodoro, a traditional Tuscan bread and tomato soup. This simple rustic dish has been a staple of Tuscan cuisine since way before Dante.
Chef Andrea Leonelli remembers it from his earliest childhood, but then he is only 32. Leonelli was in New York recently with four other Tuscan restaurant chefs and Tito Barbini, the region's minister of agriculture, for a celebration of things Tuscan, including a food festival at the United Nations.
For 11 days the chefs made more than 130 country dishes for lunch guests in the delegates' dining room. (Dining room reservations doubled during the time the Tuscan chefs were making lunch.)
Pappa al pomodoro is made with stale bread, fresh ripe plum tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil and some seasoning. The most time-consuming part of making this flavorful soup is letting the bread get old and dry. The rest can be done in minutes.
The basics
To make pappa al pomodoro, Leonelli showed a visitor to the U.N. kitchens, you are essentially soaking very dry bread in cooked fresh tomatoes and olive oil until the bread absorbs all the moisture. Then you stir it and eat. This is not a liquid soup, but has more the consistency of pudding.
Like the best of Tuscan cuisine, it is a simple dish made with the finest ingredients. Bread and olive oil are the foundation of Tuscan cuisine. (So is wine, which they consider an accessory to a better life, but that's another story.)
Olive oil is the only dressing allowed in Tuscan cooking. And why not? High concentrations of olive trees grow in the hills around Florence, Siena, Arezzo and other Tuscan towns, according to Barbini. With 78 varieties of olive trees, Tuscany is a sort of living archive of Mediterranean olive cultivation.
The harvest of each new crop is celebrated with a festival. A drizzle of oil finishes off soups and vegetables served at the Tuscan table. A favorite way of tasting fresh vegetables is to dip them in new oil and salt. Bread and oil make a perfect match in fettunta, which is a slice of toasted bread rubbed with a garlic clove, seasoned with salt, and soaked in olive oil.
Bruschetta is similar but you add chopped fresh tomatoes and basil to the toasted bread. Ribollita, which means reheated or re-cooked in Italian, is another rich soup made with bread, seasonal vegetables, and white beans. (It is minestra di pane when first made and ribollita when it is reheated two days later. Go figure!)
Legend
Tuscan bread has no salt because it's meant to showcase these other flavors. However, there is a legend that blames it on the town of Pisa, near Tuscany's west coast.
In the 7th century, the story goes, salt arrived in the river port but local rivalries were too intense for the Pisan government to allow it to be transported further to the Tuscan hinterland.
At that point Tuscan bakers switched to baking bread without salt and have never used it since. After all, bread has always accompanied cold meats and typical dishes already rich in flavor, so why waste salt by adding it to the bread?
Tuscan bread can be rectangular, oval or round. The crust is crumbly and crunchy. The ivory white inside has irregular pockets of air created during baking, and a faint scent of toasted hazelnuts.
Substitutions
If you don't have Tuscan bread to make pappa al pomodoro, use any unsalted white bread, Leonelli says.
How old should the bread be?
"Very old," he says. "The older and drier the bread, the creamier the soup." To get bread this dry, leave it out in the air, perhaps on a rack on a kitchen counter and let it dry naturally. But Leonelli warns against leaving it in a plastic store bag, which will turn it moldy. You can't dry bread in a slow oven because it will harden and some moisture will remain.
Removing the crust adds to the soup's creaminess. Back in the Middle Ages, the crust was left on so that no part of the bread was wasted.
Olive oil and tomatoes are the dominant flavors in this soup. Use only very, very ripe fresh plum (Roma) tomatoes. These are more solid and less juicy than other types of tomato. (Canned plum tomatoes cannot compare for flavor, so resist the temptation to use them.)
Leeks, basil and salt and pepper are the only seasonings and they are used sparingly.
"Always tear the basil," Leonelli says, slowly ripping a basil leaf and explaining in his broken English. Don't chop the fresh basil with a knife. "If you do, you lose flavor." (Cutting breaks the molecular structure and you will end up with bitter pieces of basil.)
The chef doesn't measure salt and pepper but suggests you use a bit and then taste as you go to see if you need more. Once the bread is in the soup, "add water if needed," the chef says, "so the bread can absorb all the flavor."
He stirred his soup vigorously with a big spoon, but pointed out that to make it even creamier, you could use a whisk. The faster you stir the soup, the creamier it will become.
"It's even better warmed up the next day -- it gets creamier," Leonelli adds. "It also gets crispy on top."
The dish
Pappa al pomodoro is wonderful and warming all by itself with a glass of young Tuscan wine such as Chianti Classico.
Or, make it part of a meal by preceding it with an antipasto of sliced salami, prosciutto, cheeses, and artichokes in olive oil. Follow the soup with a roast pork loin or sliced Florentine steak, with arugula and Parmesan cheese.
The ingredients in the recipe on the preceding page are approximate. Weigh the bread and tomatoes if you can. Otherwise calculate about 7 to 8 plum tomatoes in a pound; and there should be about three thick slices of bread for each serving of soup.
You may use more or less water depending on the consistency of the bread and tomatoes. For example, some tomatoes may be juicier than others, some bread more or less dry.
Although fine extra-virgin olive oil is crucial to flavor, people worried about calories may want to use less oil and more water.
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