The grapes were ripe, hanging, full, needing to be picked. Signor Bruschi let us know that it was time to pick them. We asked if he wanted any, and he laughed and said no. I knew we had to get them off the vine, but then what?? I mean, what do you do with about 20 kilos of grapes? These are ‘uva americana’, a sweet table grape very similar to the Concord grape, so wine was out of the question, we don’t really eat much jam and a cake would use up only one bunch out of the 20 kilos. I was sitting in the kitchen with my friend Deborah when we came across a recipe for grape skin flour bread in Richard Bertinet’s outstanding bread book, “Crust”.
Bertinet had one up on me because someone gifted him with the already finished grape flour and all I had was an enormous vat of grapes in need of attention. What good luck! I also had willing friends who actually agreed to help me squish grape bodies out of their grape skins. There was talk of repetitive motion disorder, but the grumbling was surprisingly muted and eventually all the grapes were separated from their skins.
Finally it was time to mix and knead the bread and I
basically followed Bertinet’s formula, but wound up tweaking it a bit because
it was feeling too dense. I think I may also have had to compensate for the
residual sugar in the skins as Bertinet’s recipe used cabernet sauvignon
grapes, which are nowhere near as sweet as the uva Americana. I opted for a classic roll shape for the
bread, nothing fancy, just an easy to eat, share and store shape.
The color of the dough was a deep, flecked brown and once
baked it took on a slightly more purplish hue, but if you didn’t know better,
you would have thought it was a dark rye bread from the appearance. We sampled our rolls and it was a
unanimous decision…we all loved the bread! It was chewy, flavorful, very
hearty, and tasted fantastic with a hard dry salami. The salty, meaty flavor of
the salami brought out the unique essence of this bread. Of course, it really
made me crave some country style pate to go with the bread, but this being
Umbria, it means I have to make the pate myself. It was about this time, when I
announced a pate making adventure, that my willing and adventurous kitchen
partners all changed the subject. Even when I promised to get the meat from a
butcher and not start with raising and slaughtering, they were still content to
stay with the salami. Weenies!
For those of you less inclined to grow the grapes, and make
your own flour, I did find an online source for the flour, so you can skip
right to the fun part.
And for a complete roundup of delicious bread from World Bread Day: Cicca Qui!
Uva Americana Grape Skin Flour Formula
400g white bread flour, 180g grape skin flour, 50g whole wheat or rye flour, 200g ferment (mother), 5g fresh yeast, 250 g water, 100g dry red wine, 10 g salt
Combine, knead (yes, knead), let rise for about an hour, turn the dough, let it raise again for about 2 hours, form into loaves or bread, let rise for about a half an hour as the oven heats up to around 450F. Bake until done...about 20 minutes.