This is the most precious recipe on blog along with piadina flatbread.
Mascarpone ( the name of the dessert is the same of the cheese it’s made from, mascarpone cheese) is the most festive sweet treat, no matter if it’s Christmas or mid-August holiday, no one from Romagna, in his full digestive capacity, would choose a sherbet if he can choose a mascarpone.
As you may know if you follow me steadily I love mixing different cooking cultures, using different spices not common in Italian cooking.
This way to interpret food comes from my university years in Rimini: I used to live with a lot of people from different places from guys from South of Italy to frieds from England, Greece and even a boy half Venezuelan half from Sicily.
Meal time was a funny mix of dolmades, tagliatelle and Marmite.
In this post I should tell you about my long search for berberè: in Italy nowadays you can find almost every kind of spice and exotic food but berberè seems to be fleeing.
I searched big supermarkets and small shops then I searched the web.
Of course I found it easily then I discovered shipping costs: higher than the cost of the spice.
I give myself the chance to bake something last week end: my sourdough Brienne was alone in the fridge for too long.
I was craving not pizza or bread but something easy and that could last few days: I was procastinating brezel for a long time, I found a recipe with sourdough so I just needed a helpful hand.
Luckly Lorenzo was home and willing to help.
Brezels ( or prezels, it depends on the region) are a kind of bread someone leads back to monks in France and North of Italy whom, with dough leftovers, made small treats the shape of hands joined to pray for children who learn by heart part of the Bible or prayers.
The shiny dark colour of brezel is their distinctive trait and it’s reached with a boiling process called Laugengebäck in German.
The boiling happens in a solution of water and lye, in countries where brezels are common you can buy lye cubes at chemist’s but here they aren’t plus lye is quite dangerous especially if you have an helping child around so in this recipe you will find instructions to boil brezels into a solution of water, baking soda and cooking salt.
The result will be not as shiny and dark as with lye but the taste is great.
After all this I have to say one more thing about brezel: I had to do them.
I really had to do them because when I was in Munich in October with my sister and my best friend I wandered about for three days looking for a cloth or tea towel or napking with blue and white squares, emblem of Bavaria for my photo sets and they wandered about with me.
I only find the right napking ( not too shiny, not with too big squares…) the last day, we really looked for it everywhere and now I really had to make a Bavaria dish and to take pictures with that napkin!
Isn’t it great? Say yes please!
| Servings |
7
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Ingredients
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First post after the summer break, I did almost everything I had in my mind, I’m happy of being here again, first because the fact I can go to holiday is something to be grateful for and second because I’m relaxated, I’ve rested a lot and Im ready to face my favourite season of the year, fall.
From monday we’ ll start again our routines: work for us and summer camp for Lorenzo ( kindergarten starts only from 17 September here); I’m doing the wash, iron, fold and repeat thing since yesterday and I did this morning the big grocery shopping and I’m trying to re-animate my sourdough Brienne after a long time in the fridge to start September and the baking season the better way.
