Andrea measures flour: 12.5kg of gentle wheat 0, 1.5kg of wholemeal, and 1kg of farro. He scoops it from 3 paper sacks into one, then upends and pours it into the mixer in the nook of the stall. If you’d asked me last year what dry flour smells like, I might have replied: “not plenty.” Now, having spent the closing six months meeting pasta and pizza makers, I’ve found out that exact sparkling flour, and specifically wholemeal, smells hopeful and sappy, like fresh sawdust and a smooth infant. “It smells alive,” Andrea says as he pours 10 liters of water into the mixer. The odor is mainly pleasurable in the cool of the marketplace at 8 am. Once the flour and water are dough, they’re left to rest for an hour, and we move for espresso on the market bar.
The new Testaccio market can be brilliant and current, the other of its old, bosky incarnation; however, its spirit has remained much the same. This is both correct and elaborate. Good because it means it’s still the resilient, difficult-operating promote it has continually been, with a tangible sense of shared history and community between stallholders, several of whom had been there for more than 50 years, and whose families have labored stalls for nearly a century. Tricky, because of its manner of suspicion and resistance to change, beginners want to be resilient and hardworking.
Husband and wife Andrea and Paola Manco are the very definitions of this. At Casa Manco, the scent of sap is masked by the aroma of espresso and hot milk, and the sound of the mixer is changed by the fierce gurgle and steam of the bar’s coffee device and the lyrics of Lizzo’s Juice: “I’m no longer a snack at all. Look, infant, I’m the complete rattling meal.” Having misplaced almost the entirety in a devastating collision of instances (the Italian financial disaster and kingdom duplicity), the couple determined to start something new; Andrea, an architect, taught himself to make pizza dough, and Paola to top bake them.
They weren’t the simplest new arrivals in the tightly knit marketplace, but they chose to make one among Rome’s safe-to-eat canons, pizza al taglio (pizza by the slice). They earned their region, admiration and queues by making something exceptionally good. Andrea’s dough is baked into a platonic ideal of pizza with substance and bite, while gentle as an aerated cushion. Back at the stall, the mixer has grown to become one. Only now is the yeast introduced, an insignificant 18g, observed with the aid of salt and olive oil. While the dough twists and turns, Andrea gives me the home quantities, which I will use as a starting line and modify as I analyze. They are 610g 00 or 0 flour, 90g wholemeal or farro flour, and 8g dried yeast mixed with 500 ml room-temperature water.
Those mixing by hand have to combine the dried yeast with the 2 flours, then add it to the water in a bowl. Once the mixture becomes a shaggy ball, turn it out onto a floured board and knead in 12g first-rate salt and 15 ml olive oil – dough scrapers are useful right here. The language of dough is a shiny and human one; flour is alive, it wishes to be oxygenated, its mood varies depending on the time of the month, and it gets fearful in case you work it too difficult. Then, like all residing creatures, it desires to rest.
Andrea leaves him for 4 days within the fridge. However, my home model needs the simplest 12 hours, covered with cling film. I then eliminate it from the refrigerator hours earlier than baking. Positioning is the whole thing. Unlike most of the stalls selling avenue food, Casa Manco is within the midst of the fruit and vegetable stalls, the butchers, and wine being bought by the liter. Paola shops every day – Roman produce and culinary way of life meet her very own modern cooking with roast tomatoes and pecorino, baked fennel and lemon, soft cheese, smoked meat and prunes, vegetables with anchovy, pine nuts, and raisins.
For my model, she indicates marinating halved cherry tomatoes with olive oil, salt, sugar, and oregano overnight, then roasting them till sweet and wrinkled. Back domestic, my seven-year-old son proves a lot higher than I at stretching the dough together with his arms to the width of the tin, then giving it dimples with his fingertips. Like dough, baking is all approximately practice and feel, Andrea reminds me. You can be given specific instructions. However, it is a reminder of trial and error. We flip the oven up completely whack to 260C. I swear half the dough with passata and the alternative with olive oil and bake for 20 minutes, the shredded mozzarella and grated parmesan occurring for the remaining three minutes, and the roast tomatoes and basil at the end. That hopeful smell returns along with Lizzo’s lyrics: “Look, baby, I’m the entire damn meal.”
