Leftover bread. Let's make canederli dumplings and a cake together
Meet me for our next exclusive Cook Along, on Sunday February 16th, 2025
“To feed the planet, first you have to fight the waste.” —Massimo Bottura
Cucina povera is all about arte dell’arrangiarsi, the Italian art of making do, with ingenuity, resourcefulness, and frugality. The waste-not approach is still central in most Italian households, a way of thinking and behaving that comes from afar.
From a historical perspective, upcycling leftovers has been a common practice for all social classes throughout Italian history. It was a well-rooted habit among the middle classes and even in the upper-level courts, where the ostentatiousness of the food served never translated into waste. For the lower classes, though, leftovers were never accidental. Peasant households were usually composed of large patriarchal families, and the women would cook large amounts of food to feed the many people living under the same roof. The leftover food would be reheated, repurposed, and/or transformed into something completely new.
In a society strongly permeated by the Catholic culture, waste was intolerable from an ethical, social, and religious perspective.
Take bread, for example, a staple food and a religious symbol. Every Italian region has at least one typical identifying recipe made with stale bread, associated with local and seasonal ingredients, from the ubiquitous pancotto, to the Tuscan summer bread salad panzanella, pappa al pomodoro, ribollita—the Tuscan winter Lacinato kale and bean soup, thicken with slices of stale bread— and acquacotta—I made it when Milk Street came for a visit to my kitchen, you can read about it here. Each crumb would count.
I have a cotton bag hung behind my kitchen door, where I collect each and every scrap of stale bread. It is an instinctive reflex, something I’ve learned watching my grandmother and my mom doing this. Stale bread is as precious as gold: it becomes breadcrumbs, gnocchi, or breakfast cakes, a stuffing for vegetables, or it thickens soups, turning them into filling, satisfying meals. Eventually, it can even feed your chickens and rabbits.
As suggested during our latest cook along, the theme for the February cook along is stale bread, or, better said, smart ways and delicious recipes to give a new life to your day-old bread.
But for once we won’t be cooking recipes from Tuscany…
Sunday Cook-Along: leftover bread
Join me online this Sunday, February 16th, at 9:00 PM CEST | 3:00 PM EDT | 12:00 PM PDT for a special cook-along reserved for all paid subscribers dedicated to two recipes with stale bread: canederli, stale bread dumplings from Alto Adige, and torta di pane, a deliciously moist, chocolate bread pudding cake, studded with prunes and dried figs.
A recording of the class will be available for all paid subscribers after the event. (Here you can see the recording of one of our previous Cook Alongs when we made fresh egg pasta).
The recorded videos will always be available here on Substack: we’re slowly building an archive of video recipes you can access whenever you need to refresh your technique to make orecchiette, tortelli, tagliatelle, or ricotta gnocchi.
PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS IF YOU WILL BE THERE, SO I’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU!
(For paid subscribers: all the recipes, ingredient lists, the Cook-Along Working Sheet, and the link to join the session are available behind the paywall.)
Mark your calendar for the next event!
Sunday, March 16th | 8:00 pm CET | 3:00 pm EST | 12:00 pm PST
All about risotto (and a recipe for a pressure cooker risotto, too!)