Guest post by Dana Roberts

The brand new Artisan Bread Course Tuscany ran in July and we enjoyed showing our guests what our artisans have to offer. Dana Roberts joined us on the course and has allowed us to share her colourful experiences and wonderful photos with you here. Here's what she had to say...

So far, my bread course has been amazing! We started at a family run restaurant with amazing homemade pasta. Then we went to a commercial bakery, where we watched them bake a massive batch of bread from beginning to end, finishing at 1 am.

Then on Monday morning, we visited the last remaining traditional blacksmith. He is totally off the grid, using the power of the stream that runs under his forge to power his tools. He showed us how he would forge the griddle pans used to make griddle bread. It was quite the experience! 

Then off to Fattoria Sardi, a biodynamic farm and winery, to learn about sourdough. Biodynamic farms focus on creating a soil which will remain vital and productive for years to come. It’s kind of like the next progression for organic farms, which focus on creating healthier products for the consumer. Biodynamic farms are just starting at the source to create the desired outcome for future generations. ​

All of these classes are interspersed with amazing food and drink. As much as possible, everything is locally sourced and sustainably farmed. A lot of small businesses trying their best to stay afloat and create a better world at the same time. 

​We started out on Tuesday at Fattoria Sardi to cook the sourdough we started on Monday. 

​During one of the wait times (there’s a lot of waiting involved in making bread), we toured the vineyard and learned more about the biodynamic system. We had another amazing lunch here (I highly recommend it if you’re ever in the area), and got to bring home our bread. 

Remember those griddles we saw being made at the forge on Monday morning? They are called ‘testi’, and we learned how to use them on Wednesday. We started out by making fogaccia leva (no, that’s not a typo). We added pancetta to some, cheese to others, and they were all delicious. We also learned to make a traditional Tuscan bean and sausage dish called ​fagioli all'ucceletto. ​

From here we visited a functioning water mill from 1736, which I found very interesting. Then it was off to Cascio, which claims to be the only place that makes crisciolette, which also uses the testi. This time the pancetta was cooked into the flatbread, which was also delicious. We also made necci, which uses chestnut flour. 

At the end of the class, I asked if the tower in the town would be open during their upcoming ‘festa’. Turns out, the guy I asked had the key and he let us go up right then! I loved it! 

​We finished off the night by going over to Barga, checking out the duomo, and eating yet more food. I’m going to have to find more towers to climb just to work off the twenty pounds I’m going to gain this week!

This is Paolo Magazzini. He is carrying on his mother's baking. He is also a farro and beef farmer, and runs a farro mill.

I found it interesting that the bread is mixed just on the counter. The brighter yellow is riced potatoes, which is the type of bread his mother made for the village. The starter dough used in this bread is over fifty years old!

​All the bread in this bakery is baked in a wood fired oven. The fire is built directly on the base until the oven is at the right temperature. Then the embers are removed, the dough put in, and the door put on while the bread bakes.

Our guide, Erica, showing us the boughs which are used to sweep the embers out of the oven before putting the dough in. Paolo is soaking the broom to prepare to sweep the oven out.

Getting the embers out quickly. It has to be fast so the oven doesn't cool down too much.

There was a small herd of beef cattle on the farm as well. One of the cows just had twins, which was a first for Paolo's cows.

Here is the finished product!

We then drove to this fort, overlooking the valley. We learned about how food was used in medieval times.

At the end of the evening, we went to a winery for another amazing meal. These are the grapes for their Pinot Nero wine. It's a small vineyard, producing only about 8000 bottles. I also really liked their white wine.

The inside of their cellar, which illustrates just how much smaller it is than most wineries I have toured.

Okay, the bread adventure is finished, and it was an incredible experience. I loved meeting local artisans, and learning about Italian traditions and customs. It is truly what I wanted when we decided to move to Italy. The tourist sites are very impressive, but you don't really get a feel for what life is like here, and you can't appreciate the culture until you get off the beaten path.

I also feel it is important to gain an awareness of how this culture is slowly dying out as people buy items based on convenience and price rather than quality. A huge thank you goes out to Sapori e Saperi Adventures for creating this experience, and to the clients who had to cancel due to Covid and gifted me with the opportunity to attend. I made some new friends, and hope I can remember all that I learned, both about bread and about Italian life.

This is all part of the Artisan Bread Course Tuscany, which will be taking place again from 2-7 July, 2023! Find out more here. 
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Continuing anti-clockwise around the base of the hills, you hurry through a chain of strip developments to San Giovanni alla Vena and the last remaining potter in a ceramic tradition going back to the Middle Ages. Here is the source of the ubiquitous green spatter ware I see in every ethnographic museum in Lucca Province, and which I’ve been trying to track down for years.

Still half an hour till a respectable Italian dinner time. Venturing past the cemetery, a sign to Frantoio Vicopisano (Olive Press of Vicopisano) beckons.

The tour by the enthusiastic owners lasts longer than you expected. Another note to come back in October during the olive harvest.

​An hour later you enter Paolo Ricci’s welcoming restaurant L’Osteria di Ceppato where the seafood tastes like a million euros but costs so little you wonder whether there’s a zero missing at the end of the bill. The aromas of the meat dishes on the neighbouring table presage another visit.

Completing the ring, you arrive at Lucca on the Via Sarzanese. Just before crossing back into Lucca Province the huddle of houses named Caccialupi, ‘Hunt the wolves’, may raise a smile. Not an activity you’ll find on my tours.

This is all part of the Autumn in Tuscany tour, which will be taking place from 3-13 November, 2023! Find out more here. 
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This blog was originally published on Slow Travel Tours on 7 September 2014.

By Alison Goldberger

When I wanted to learn how to make salami I knew travelling to Italy was the only way to do it, so I booked onto the Advanced Salumi Course in Tuscany with Sapori & Saperi Adventures. The course was incredible, and I learned so much.

I was also so impressed by Erica and her company that I asked her if we could collaborate. I’m a Scottish journalist and organic pig farmer but have lived and worked in Austria since 2015. Now I assist Erica with social media and online marketing. I absolutely love telling people about my time on her course and now I am excited to share with you why I think travelling with a local expert in 2022 (and beyond) can only enhance your holiday experience!

One of the most wonderful experiences I had was to dine in restaurants uncovered by Erica after years of eating and living in Tuscany. You can be guaranteed you’re not just eating in the restaurant all the other tourists found online! We were treated to dinner at Il Vecchio Mulino, where Andrea brought out course after course of exquisite local food. Many of Erica’s courses and tours also include meals in private homes. In Capezzano I was welcomed into Gabriella’s home where I ate the best seafood I’ve ever had. The freshest seafood cooked to perfection and an extremely warm welcome – it was an unforgettable experience.

Do you have a passion for prosciutto like I do? It’s unlikely you can just stroll up to any producer and they’ll tell you how it’s done. But when you travel with a local you certainly can, and they are happy to answer all your questions. When learning all about salumi in Tuscany I visited numerous artisans and gleaned the knowledge they’ve garnered over a lifetime. On these tours you’re also supporting these very small businesses, creating wonderful slow food with a passion you’re unlikely to find in large-scale producers. What’s more, you get to taste their incredible products! 

You want to visit a local organic olive oil producer, or have always wondered how chestnut flour is produced, or perhaps gelato is more your thing? These were all requests during my course and every one was fulfilled! I took home a bag of chestnut flour after seeing how chestnuts are dried and milled. I sampled the best pistachio gelato at Cremeria Opera in Lucca and bought the tastiest new-season olive oil from Claudio Orsi of Alle Camelie. Erica has built up so many contacts across the region and she is happy to help visitors find what they’re looking for.

Erica drove us during our course so she was always on hand to answer questions and give us explanations about what we were seeing as we travelled. It was information born from a passion for Tuscany and gave us a wonderful insight into the history of the region as well as what it’s really like to live there. This is a feature of all tours and courses from Sapori & Saperi. For instance, on the Tastes & Textiles tours participants learn all about Lucca’s rich tradition of producing textiles. Meeting local craftspeople provides a wealth of knowledge you couldn’t get elsewhere!

I’d like to thank Klaus Falbe-Hansen for his keen eye, excellent photos and unfailing sense of humour at Carnival 2010.

You still have time to catch one of the Carnival parades at Viareggio this year (2022):

Sunday 20 February - 3 pm
Fat Thursday 24 February - 6 pm
Sunday 27 February - 3 pm
Fat Tuesday 1 March - 3 pm
Saturday 5 March  - 5 pm
Saturday 12 March - 5 pm

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This blog was originally published on Slow Travel Tours on 12 February 2012.

Returning to the dictionary, it says the antipasti are supposed to whet the appetite. Personally, I find more than one puts a damper on my appetite for the rest of the meal, and finally I’ve found some Italians who agree with me. I invited Marzia (one of my cheesemakers) and her husband to dinner last night. Since I figured one antipasto would never satisfy an Italian, I decided to serve three. A bit meagre, I knew. By the time we got to the secondo, a stuffed roast guinea fowl, they said they were already full. They declared that antipasti kill their appetites, and they could easily do without any. I must remind them next time my cheese course is at their house for dinner and they serve seven antipasti!
​
Back to my question: how many can you eat?

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This blog was originally published on Slow Travel Tours on 31 March, 2019.

I admit we weren’t dancing on the tables. It wasn’t that wild, but there was some heady acorn beer.

And there’s the clue. Every dish was enriched with wild plants foraged by Stefano Pucci, the environmental guide whose walks I often go on.  After a week of over-indulgence, practically a legal requirement for Christmas and New Year festivities in Italy, I look back with pleasure on that convivial meat-free meal I had in October at the trattoria and micro-brewery La Collina at Loppeglia (Pescaglia).

Stefano has been foraging for wild plants since he was a boy. He’s never happier than when in his beloved woods on the slopes of the Alpi Apuane mountains, and nothing is too much trouble or too time-consuming for him.

The acorns, for example. He collects them, cleans them and mills them by hand with patience and care. I daren’t ask how many hours of labour this entails, especially since he collects enough for Alessandro, the master brewer at La Collina, to make a batch of excellent acorn-flavoured beer named Driadi.

Whoa! Aren’t acorns poisonous? I remember learning when studying anthropology at Berkeley that California Coast native Americans had figured out how to remove the toxins. Maybe I’m misremembering; it was a long time ago. Stefano reassures me that they’re not dangerous, and I’m still here to tell the tale.

In the kitchen Paola worked her magic on Stefano’s foraged plants and interesting varieties of more common plants from his vegetable garden.

Nido di polenta al pesto Ombelico di Venere
Nest of polenta with pesto of Venus’s navel

It’s called navelwort in English without specifying whose navel, and Umbilicus rupestris in Latin. It’s a fleshy plant in the stonewort family (Crassulaceae). Stefano adds that it was an important food of mediaeval pilgrims. ‘Wort’ was used in English names of plants and herbs used for food or medicinally. Perhaps coincidentally but then again maybe not, wort is also the sweet infusion of ground malt or other grain (not to mention acorns) before fermentation, used to produce beer and distilled malt liquors.

Who would have guessed this is what Venus’s navel looked like? I checked out Botticelli’s painting ‘Venus and Mars’ (‘Venere e Marte’), but she’s fully clothed.

Crostone con pomodoro fresco al Satiro
Large toast with fresh tomato and Satyr’s herb

In Greek and Roman mythology satyrs were lustful, drunken woodland gods. Drinking acorn beer, no doubt. From the libidinous to the botanist (not to imply that a botanist can’t be debauched), the scientific name is Satureja montana. In English we call it winter savory, which might sound less lascivious, but savoury can mean spicy and piquant.

Maccheroncini ai porcini della selva pescaglina
Maccheroni with porcini mushrooms from the Pescaglia woods

Maccheroni in this part of Italy isn’t elbow macaroni. It’s thin squares or rectangles of egg pasta, usually made by hand, as it was in this case.

Casarecce all'aglione
Casarecce with giant garlic

​Casarecce are a type of short, dry pasta. Stefano explained that aglione dates from Etruscan times and comes from the Val di Chiana, southern Tuscany. He grows it in his vegetable garden. It doesn’t contain alliin, the chemical which, when exposed to air, is metabolised to allicin which gives normal garlic its strong, characteristic smell and flavour. Finally I understand the dish you often see on menus around Siena, pici all’aglione. Pici are thick strands of spaghetti, and the sauce is a simple tomato sauce with lots of aglione. No wonder when I tried to make it at home, the garlic was always overpowering. In my ignorance, I used normal garlic instead of aglione. I wish someone had told me long ago.

Frittata con Silene Alba con patate rosse dell' orto di Ubaldo al forno
Frittata with white campion and roast red potatoes from Ubaldo’s orto

You probably know that a frittata is beaten egg cooked in a frying pan and, if you’re adventurous, flipped over when the bottom is cooked. Don’t tell anyone, but I put mine under the grill to finish the cooking, so as to avoid ending up with the frittata on the floor instead of in the pan. You can add almost any cooked vegetable to the egg before cooking it. Here it’s Silene alba or white campion, a wild herb with a slightly sweetish flavour. The red potatoes came from Stefano’s garden, named Ubaldo after his father, and were grown without any irrigation.

Ghianducci e Vin Santo

This is a play on the word cantucci, the typical Tuscan biscuit or cookie containing almonds and often called biscotti in English. Instead of using wheat flour, these were made with acorn, ghiande in Italian, flour milled by Stefano. Vin santo (sacred wine) is a Tuscan dessert wine in which you dunk your ghianducci.

 All this for only €23!

If you live near Lucca and speak Italian, I highly recommend Stefano’s walks. You’ll always learn something new and interesting. You can find them at Stefano's website and Facebook page.

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What does Tuscan heritage mean to you? Do you think of Florence and its famous art and architecture? The leaning tower of Pisa? Maybe the landscape of vineyards, olive groves and pencil cypresses that give us Chianti and olive oil?

My Italian friends from Lucca helped me design a tour based on their idea of their own heritage. They envisaged a tour that snaked diagonally across the region from Sansepolcro and Arezzo in the southeast to Lucca in the northwest. Chianti yes, but not the vineyards that leap to mind. Art and architecture yes. But no Florence. No Siena. No Pisa.

​Here are ten experiences they don’t want slow travellers to miss.

Why there? For two reasons.

1 The fresco of the ‘Resurrection’ by the hugely influential early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. You don’t have to be religious to be spellbound by it. Aldous Huxley called it the ‘greatest picture in the world’.

An English friend who accompanied me on a research trip said that of everywhere we went, it’s the place she most wants to return to. Its striking position poised on a cliff edge is attraction enough. Add to that a tour of the Jacquard looms at the Busatti linen mill, and you’ll want to return too.

Could Chianti wine be even better if they restored all the dry-stone walling that was demolished when tractors blazed a trail through the vineyards in the 1960s and ‘70s? You can judge for yourself during a vineyard tour and tasting.

San Miniato claims their white truffles are better than the more famous ones from Alba in the Piedmont. Follow the Lagotto dog, find your truffles and relish lunch with truffles in every course (except dessert).

When the Florentine Republic conquered the Pisans in 1406 they commissioned their star architect-engineer, Filippo Brunelleschi—famed for the dome of the duomo of Florence—to redesign the Pisan fortress at Vicopisano. My historian friend from Pisa says you mustn’t miss this magnificent castle, and he’s going to show you around himself.

My Slow Food friends are sure you have no idea how good extra virgin olive oil can be until you taste it here in Tuscany. It deserves the same attention you lavish on wine.

Lucca is so conservative that it never tore down its Renaissance walls, as if waiting for another attack. It may as well be us. And who better to show us around than a descendant of one of the noble families who ruled Lucca in the Renaissance!

Baritone Mattia Campetti insists that every visitor to Lucca must hear the music of that great operatic composer Giacomo Puccini in his home town. Mattia will give you a vivid and amusing tour of Puccini’s home at Torre del Lago. Be prepared for an entertaining concert when Mattia is joined by his soprano wife Michelle Buscemi.

On the grill are a pig and a cow (no apologies for sneaking in two items here): the indigenous Cinta Senese pig (belted pig of Siena) and the white Chianina cow, possibly a descendant of the huge Palaeolithic aurochs. Their succulent flavour hasn’t diminished at all over the millennia.

Every Tuscan meal must end sweetly with cantuccini dunked in vin santo, our Tuscan dessert wine.

​How to book the Tuscan's Tuscany:

If my Tuscan friends have convinced you to come see Tuscany through their eyes, have a look at all the tour details here (click on the tabs below the introduction and read what appears in the window below) and email me for a booking form.

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Butter isn’t an ingredient you’ll find in traditional Tuscan cuisine. The people north of the Apennine Mountains have cows, and they make butter. In Tuscany we have sheep. Their milk is used to produce pecorino cheese (the word for sheep is ‘pecora’ and the cheese made from their milk is ‘pecorino’).

In the Garfagnana we have a native all-purpose cow good for a bit of both milk and meat, which since the diffusion of modern specialised breeds and until very recently was considered good for nothing and nearly died out completely.

Families made a little butter which they used primarily in sweet dishes. In a local cookbook compiled by a woman of Lucca, out of 179 savoury recipes only four call for butter, three contain béchamel sauce and one is the recipe of a chef who had emigrated to New York. On the other hand, almost every single one contains extra-virgin olive oil. Out of 33 desserts, 23 use butter, mostly in the pasta frolla crust of pies.

Occasionally you come across a cow family, like the Nesti of Melo (Cutigliano) into which Daniela Pagliai married. (Women rarely take their husband’s surnames, although the children bear their father’s name.) Daniela had been her father’s shepherd since she was nine and in charge of making pecorino from the age of 14. When she married, she had to change gears. She now makes several types of cow’s milk cheese, yoghurt, gelato and butter. For more about Daniela, see my blog post: Like the Seasons: the Life of a Cheesemaker.

When I take my guests to her, I always buy some butter. It conforms to two of my rules when buying food: very few ingredients and nothing I can’t understand. Andrew Wilder of Unprocessed October calls it the Kitchen Test. Daniela’s butter contains one ingredient: panna, cream.

When I first started visiting her, butter was such a minor product that she didn’t even have a special label for it. She sold it in a ricotta wrapper. Now there’s not only a label, but also an informative essay.

Daniela says: ‘Completely natural artisan production. Its distinctiveness is that during the summer the cows graze in alpine pastures producing milk rich in betacarotene, whose colour transfers to the butter making it yellow. In winter, the feed is based on hay [not silage] and the butter is paler.’

They say that variety is the spice of life, and it’s often these tiny details that distinguish the truly artisan product from a standardised industrial one.

​Of course, nothing beats visiting the producer and checking their claims for yourself.

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This blog was originally published on Slow Travel Tours on 25 September, 2016.